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PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN 

PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE 

IN THEIR DAY 



TO WIT 



5ERNARD DE MANDEVILLE, DANIEL BARTOLI, 

CHRISTOPHER SMART, GEORGE BUBB DOD- 

INGTON, FRANCIS FURINI, GERARD DE 

LAIRESSE, AND CHARLES AVISON 



INTRODUCED BY A DIALOGUE BETWEEN APOLLO AND THE 

FATES; CONCLUDED BY ANOTHER BETWEEN 

JOHN FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 



BY 



ROBERT BROWNING 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1887 



a. 



Lo^^)ON, January 10, 1887. 

Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. are the authorized publishers 
for tiie United States of Parleyings with Certain People of Im- 
portance in their Day. 

ROBERT BROWKING. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge: 
Electrotyped and Printed by II. 0. Houghton & Co. 



IN MEMORIAM 
J. MILSAND 

OBIIT IV. SEPT. MDLXXXVI. 
Absens absentem auditque videtque. 



CONTENTS 



1 

PAGE 
ND THE FATES — A PROLOGUE 1 



'i?H BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE 21 

H DANIEL BARTOLI 37 

H CHRISTOPHER SMART 55 

H GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON .69 

H FRANCIS FURINI . ... . . . . .85 

l'H GERARD DE LAIRESSE 113 

TH CHARLES AVISON 135 

VD HIS FRIENDS— AN EPILOGUE 157 



APOLLO AND THE FATES 

A PROLOGUE 



I 

APOLLO AND THE FATES 



in Mercurium, v. 559. Eumemdes, vv. 693-4, 697-8. Alcestis, vv. 
12,33.) 



APOLLO. {From above.) 

Flame at my footfall, Parnassus ! Apollo, 
Breaking ablaze on thy topmost peak, 

Burns thence, down to the depths — dread hollow - 
Haunt of the Dire Ones. Haste ! They wreak 

Wrath on Admetus whose respite I seek. 

THE FATES. {Below. Darkmss.) 

Dragonwise couched in the womb of our Mother, 
Coiled at thy nourishing heart's core, Night ! 

Dominant Dreads, we, one by the other, 
Deal to each mortal his dole of light 

On earth — the upper, the glad, the bright. 

CLOTHO. 

Even so : thus from my loaded spindle 
Plucking a pinch of the fleece, lo, " Birth " 

Brays from my bronze lip : life I kindle : 
Look, 't is a man ! go, measure on earth 

The minute thy portion, whatever its worth ! 



APOLLO AND THE FATES 

LACHESIS. 

Woe-purfled, weal-prankt, — if it speed, if it linger, 
Life's substance and show are determined by me, n 

Who, meting out, mixing with sure thumb and finger, ^ears 
Lead lock the due length : is all smoothness and gl i 

All tangle and grief ? Take the lot, my decree ! 



ATROPOS. 

— Wliich I make an end of : the smooth as the 



My shears cut asunder : each snap shrieks " One mo 
Mortal makes sport for us Moirai who dangled 

The puppet grotesquely till earth's solid floor 
Proved film he fell through, lost in Nought as before 



CLOTHO. 

I spin thee a thread. Live, Admetus ! Produce him!^' 

LACHESIS. 

Go, — brave, wise, good, happy ! Now chequer the tl 
He is slaved for, yet loved by a god. I unloose him 

A goddess-sent plague. He has conquered, is wed, 
Men crown him, he stands at the height, — 

ATROPOS. 

He is . 



A PROLOGUE ^ 

APOLLO. {Entering: Light) 

" Dead ? " 
y, swart spinsters I So I surprise you 
laking and marring the fortunes of Man ? 
ddling — no marvel, your enemy eyes you — 
lead by head bat-like, blots under the ban 
daylight earth's blessing since time began ! 

THE FATES. 

ick to thy blest earth, prying Apollo I 
Shaft upon shaft transpierce with thy beams 
arth to the centre, — spare but this hollow 
Hewn out of Night's heart, where mystery seems 
ewed from day's malice : wake earth from her dreams! 

APOLLO. 

frones, 't is your dusk selves I startle from slumber: 
Day's god deposes you — queens Night-crowned ! 

-Plying your trade in a world ye encumber, 
Fashioning Man's web of life — spun, wound, 

Left the length ye allot till a clip strews the ground ! 

Behold I bid truce to your doleful amusement — 
Annulled by a sunbeam ! 

THE FATES. 

] Boy, are not we peers ? 



A 

6 APOLLO AND THE FATES [ 

APOLLO. ! 

You with the spindle grant birth : whose inducement || 

But yours — with the niggardly digits — endears 
To mankind chance and change, good and evil ? Your sh'icars 



ATROPOS. 



Ay, mine end the conflict : so much is no fable. 

We spin, draw to length, cut asunder : what then ? 
So it was, and so is, and so shall be : art able \ 

To alter life's law for ephemeral men ? 

APOLLO. 

Nor able nor willing. To threescore and ten 



Extend but the years of Admetus ! Disaster 
O'ertook me, and, banished by Zeus, I became 

A servant to one who forbore me though master : 
True lovers were we. Discontinue your game. 

Let him live whom I loved, then hate on, all the same 



,1 



THE FATES. 



And what if we granted — law-flouter, use-trampler — 
His life at the suit of an upstart ? Judge, tliou — , 

Of joy were it fuller, of span because ampler ? 

For love's sake, not hate's, end Admetus — ay, now — i 

Not a gray hair on head, nor a wrinkle on brow ! 



A PROLOGUE 

'or, boy, 't is illusion : from thee comes a glimmer 
Transforming to beauty life blank at the best. 

Rthdraw — and how looks life at worst, when to shimmer 
Succeeds the sure shade, and Man's lot frowns — confessed 

lere blackness chance-brightened ? Whereof shall attest 

'he truth this same mortal, the darling thou stylest, 
Whom love would advantage, — eke out, day by day, 

L life which 't is solely thyself reconcilest 
Thy friend to endure, — life with hope : take away 

lope's gleam from Admetus, he spurns it. For, say — 

Vhat 's infancy ? Ignorance, idleness, mischief : 
Youth ripens to arrogance, foolishness, greed : 

Ige — impotence, churlishness, rancor : call this chief 
Of boons for thy loved one ? Much rather bid speed 

)ur function, let live whom thou hatest indeed ! 

*ersuade thee, bright boy-thing ! Our eld be instructive ! 

APOLLO. 

And certes youth owns the experience of age. 
1 e hold then, grave seniors, my beams are productive 

— They solely — of good that 's mere semblance, engage 
Man's eye — gilding evil, Man's true heritage ? 

THE FATES. 

So, even so ! From without, — at due distance 



8 APOLLO AND THE FATES 

If viewed, — set a-sparkle, reflecting thy rays, — 
Life mimics the smi : but, withdraw such assistance, 

The counterfeit goes, the reality stays — 
An ice-ball disguised as a fire-orb. 

APOLLO. 

What craze 

Possesses the fool then whose fancy conceits him 
As happy ? 

THE FATES. 

Man happy ? 

APOLLO. 

If otherwise — solve 
This doubt which besets me ! What friend ever greets liim 

Except with " Live long as the seasons revolve," 
Not " Death to thee straightway " ? Your doctrines absolve 

Such hailing from hatred : yet Man should know best. 

He talks it, and glibly, as life were a load 
Man fain would be rid of : when put to the test, 

He whines " Let it lie, leave me trudging the road 
That is rugged so far, but me thinks ..." 

THE FATES. 

Ay, 't is owed 



A PROLOGUE 9 

To that glamour of thine, he bethinks him " Once past 
The stony, some patch, nay, a smoothness of sward 

Awaits my tired foot : life turns easy at last " — 
Thy largess so lures him, he looks for reward 

Of the labor and sorrow. 

APOLLO. 

It seems, then — debarred 

Of illusion — (I needs must acknowledge the plea) 

Man desponds and despairs. Yet, — still further to draw 

Due profit from counsel, — suppose there should be 
Some power in himself, some compensative law 

By virtue of which, independently . . . 

THE FATES. 

Faugh ! 
Strength hid in the weakling ! 

What bowl-shape hast there, 
Thus laughingly proffered ? A gift to our shrine ? 
Thanks — worsted in argument ! Not so ? Declare 
Its purpose ! 

APOLLO. 

I proffer earth's product, not mine. 
Taste, try, and approve Man's invention of — Wine ! 

THE FATES. 

We feeding suck honeycombs. 



10 APOLLO AND THE FATES 

APOLLO. 

Sustenance meagre 
Such fare breeds the fumes that show all things amiss. 

Quaff wine, — how the spirits rise nimble and eager, 
Unscale the dim eyes ! To Man's cup grant one kiss 

Of your lip, then allow — no enchantment like this ! 

CLOTHO. 

Unhook wings, unhood brows I Dost hearken ? 

LACHESIS. 

I listen : 
I see — smell the food these fond mortals prefer 
To our feast, the bee's bounty I 

ATROPOS. 

The thing leaps ! But — glisteij 
Its best, I withstand it — unless all concur 
In adventure so novel. 

APOLLO. 

Ye drink ? 

THE FATES. 

We demur. 

APOLLO. 

Sweet Trine, be indulgent nor scout the contrivance 



A PROLOGUE 11 

Of Man — Bacchus-prompted ! The juice, I uphold, 
luminates gloom without sunny connivance. 

Turns fear into hope and makes cowardice bold, — 
ouching all that is leadlike in life turns it gold ! 

THE FATES. 

aith foolish as false ! 

APOLLO. 

But essay it, soft sisters ! 
Then mock as ye may. Lift the chalice to lip ! 
rood : thou next — and thou ! Seems the web, to you twisters 
Of life's yarn, so worthless ? 

CLOTHO. 

Who guessed that one sip 
iVould impart such a lightness of limb ? 

LACHESIS. 

I could skip 

[n a trice from the pied to the plain in my woof ! 

What parts each from either ? A hair's breadth, no inch. 
Once learn the right method of stepping aloof. 

Though on black next foot falls, firm I fix it, nor flinch, 
— Such my trust white succeeds ! 

ATROPOS. 

One could live — at a pinch ! 



12 APOLLO AND THE FATES 

APOLLO. 

What, beldames ? Earth's yield, by Man's skill, can effect 
Such a cure of sick sense that ye spy the relation 

Of evil to good ? But drink deeper, correct 

Blear sight more convincingly still ! Take your station 

Beside me, drain dregs ! Now for edification ! 

Whose gift have ye gulped ? Thank not me but my brother, 
Blithe Bacchus, our youngest of godshijjs. 'T was he 

Found all boons to all men, by one god or other 
Already conceded, so judged there must be 

New guerdon to grace the new advent, you see ! 

Else how would a claim to Man's homage arise ? 

The plan lay arranged of his mixed woe and weal. 
So disposed — such Zeus' will — with design to make wise 

The witless — that false things were mingled with real, 
Good with bad : such the lot whereto law set the seal. 

Now, human of instinct — since Semele's son. 
Yet minded divinely — since fathered by Zeus, 

With nought Bacchus tampered, undid not things done. 
Owned wisdom anterior, would spare wont and use. 

Yet change — without shock to old rule — introduce. 

Regard how your cavern from crag-tip to base 

Frowns sheer, height and depth adamantine, one death ! 



A PROLOGUE 13 

ouse with a beam the whole rampart, displace 
No sjilinter — yet see how my jflambeau, beneath 
id above, bids this gem wink, that crystal unsheathe ! 

ithdraw beam — disclosure once more Night forbids you 
Of spangle and sparkle — Day's chance-gift, surmised 
)ck's permanent birthright : my potency rids you 
No longer of darkness, yet light — recognized — 
oves darkness a mask : day lives on though disguised. 

Bacchus by wine's aid avail so to fluster 

Your sense, that life's fact grows from adverse and thwart 

) helpful and kindly by means of a cluster — 

Mere hand-squeeze, earth's nature sublimed by Man's art — 

lall Bacchus claim thanks wherein Zeus has no part ? 

us — wisdom anterior ? No, maids, be admonished ! 
If morn's touch at base worked such wonders, much more 
iid noontide in absolute glory astonished 
Your den, filled a-top to o'erflowing. I pour 

such mad confusion. 'T is Man's to explore 

p and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason : 

1 No torch, it suffices — held deftly and straight. 
)res, purblind at first, feel their way in due season. 

Accept good with bad, till unseemly debate 
urns concord — despair, acquiescence in fate. 



14 APOLLO AND THE FATES 

Who works this but Zeus ? Are not instinct and impulse, 
Not concept and incept his work through Man's soul j 

On Man's sense ? Just as wine ere it reach brain must brij 
pulse, 
Zeus' flash stings the mind that speeds body to goal, 

Bids i^ause at no part but jjress on, reacli the whole. 

For petty and j^oor is the part ye envisage 

When — (quaff away, cummers !) — ye view, last and first, 
As evil Man's earthly existence. Come ! Is age, 

Is infancy — manhood — so uninterspersed 
With good — some faint sprinkle ? 

CLOTHO. 

I 'd speak if I durst. 

APOLLO. 

Draughts dregward loose tongue-tie. 

LACHESLS. 

I 'd see, did no web 
Set eyes somehow winking. 

APOLLO. 

Drains-deep lies their purge 
— True coUyrium ! 

ATROPOS. 

Words, surging at high-tide, soon ebb !( 
From starved ears. 



A PROLOGUE 15 



APOLLO. 

Drink but down to the source, they resurge. 
in hands ! Yours and yours too ! A dance or a dirge ? 

CHORUS. 

lashed be our quarrel . Sourly and smilingly, 
Bare and gowned, bleached limbs and browned, 
:ive we a dance, three and one, reconcilingly. 
Thanks to the cup where dissension is drowned, 
jfeat proves triumphant and slavery crowned. 

fancy ? What if the rose-streak of morning 
Pale and depart in a passion of tears ? 
ice to have hoped is no matter for scorning ! 
Love once — e'en love's disappointment endears ! 
minute's success pays the failure of years. 

anhood — the actual ? Nay, praise the potential ! 

(Bound upon bound, foot it around I) 

hat is ? No, ^hat mmj be — sing ! that 's Man's essential ! 

(Ramp, tramp, stamp and compound 

ncy with fact — the lost secret is found !) 

je ? Why, fear ends there : the contest concluded, 
Man did live his life, did escape from the fray : 
»t scratchless but unscathed, he somehow eluded 



16 APOLLO AND THE FATES 

Each blow fortune dealt him, and conquers to-day : 
To-morrow — new chance and fresh strength, — might we saj 

Laud then Man's life — no defeat but a triumph ! 

[^Explosion from the earth's cent? 

CLOTHO. 

Ha, loose hands ! 

LACHESIS. 

I reel in a swound. 

ATROPOS. 

Horror yawns under me, while from on high — humph I 

Lightnings astound, thunders resound. 
Vault-roof reverberates, groans the ground ! [Silem 

APOLLO. 

I acknowledge. 

THE FATES. 

Hence, trickster ! Straight sobered are we 
The portent assures 't was our tongue spoke the truth, 

Not thine. While the vapor encompassed us three 

We conceived and bore knowledge — a bantling uncouth, 

Old brains shudder back from : so — take it, rash youth ! 

Lick the lump into shape till a cry comes ! 



A PROLOGUE 17 

APOLLO. 

I hear. 

THE FATES. 



Dumb music, dead eloquence ! Say it, or sing ! 
What was quickened in us and thee also ? 

APOLLO. 

I fear. 

THE FATES. 

Half female, half male — go, ambiguous thing ! 
While we speak — perchance sputter — pick up what we fling ! 

Known yet ignored, nor divined nor unguessed, 
Such is Man's law of life. Do we strive to declare 

Wlmt is ill, what is good in our spinning ? Worst, best, 

Change hues of a sudden : now here and now there 
lits the sign which decides : all about yet nowhere. 

T is willed so, — that Man's life be lived, first to last, 
Up and down, through and through — not in portions, for- 
sooth, 

Co pick and to choose from. Oiu^ shuttles fly fast, 
Weave living, not life sole and whole : as age — youth, 

»o death completes living, shows life in its truth. 

^an learningly lives : till death helps him — no lore ! 
It is doom and must be. Dost submit ? 



18 APOLLO AND THE FATfiS 

APOLLO. 

I assent — 
Concede but Admetus ! So much if no more 

Of my prayer grant as peace-pledge ! Be gracious, though, 
blent, 
Good and ill, love and hate streak your life-gift ! 

THE FATES. 

Content ! 

Such boon we accord in due measure. Life's term 
We lengthen should any be moved for love's sake 

To forego life's fulfilment, renounce in the germ 

Fruit mature — bliss or woe — either infinite. Take 

Or leave thy friend's lot : on his head be the stake ! 

APOLLO. 

On mine, griesly gammers ! Admetus, I know thee ! 

Thou prizest the right these unwittingly give 
Thy subjects to rush, pay obedience they owe thee ! 

Importunate one with another they strive 
For the glory to die that their king may survive. 

Friends rush : and who first in all Pherse appears 
But thy father to serve as thy substitute ? 



A PROLOGUE 19 

CLOTHO. 

Bah! 

APOLLO. 

e wince ? Then his mother, well stricken in years, 
Advances her claim — or his wife — 

LACHESIS. 

Tra-la-la ! 

APOLLO. 

ut he spurns the exchange, rather dies ! 

ATROPOS. 

Ha, ha, ha ! 
[^Apollo ascends. Darkness. 



WITH BEKNARD DE MANDEVILLE 



WITH BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. 



Ay, this same midnight, by this chair of mine, 

Come and review thy counsels : art thou still 

Staunch to their teaching ? — not as fools opine 

Its purport might be, but as subtler skill 

Could, through turbidity, the loaded line 

Of logic casting, sound deep, deeper, till 

It touched a quietude and reached a shrine 

And recognized harmoniously combine 

Evil with good, and hailed truth's triumph — thine, 

Sage dead long since, Bernard de Mandeville ! 

II. 

Only, 't is no fresh knowledge that I crave, 
Fuller truth yet, new gainings from the grave ; 
Here we alive must needs deal fairly, turn 
To what account Man may Man's portion, learn 
Man's proper play with truth in part, before 
Entrusted with the whole. I ask no more 
Than smiling witness that I do my best 



24 PARLEYINGS WITH 

With doubtful doctrine : afterwards the rest ! 

So, silent face me while I tliink and speak ! 

A full disclosure ? Such would outrage law. 

Law deals the same with soul and body : seek 

Full truth my soul may, when some babe, I saw I 

A new-born weakling, starts up strong — not weak — i 

Man every whit, absolved from earning awe, 

Pride, rapture, if the soul attains to wreak | 

Its will on flesh, at last can thrust, lift, draw, 

As mind bids muscle — mind which long has striven, 

Painfully urging body's impotence 

To effort whereby — once law's barrier riven, 

Life's rule abolished — body might dispense 

With infancy's probation, straight be given 

— Not by foiled darings, fond attempts back-driven, 
Fine faults of growth, brave sins which saint when shriven ~ 
To stand full-statured in magnificence. 

III. 

No : as with body so deals law with soul 

That's stung to strength through weakness, strives for good 

Through evil, — earth its race-ground, heaven its goal, 

Presumably : so far I understood 

Thy teaching long ago. But what means this ' 

— Objected by a mouth which yesterday 
Was magisterial in antithesis 

To half the truths we hold, or trust we may, 



BERNARD BE MANDEVILLE 25 

Though tremblingly the while ? " No sign " — groaned he — 

" No stirring of God's finger to denote 

He wills that right should have supremacy 

On earth, not wrong ! How helpful could we quote 

But one poor instance when He interposed 

Promptly and surely and beyond mistake 

Between oppression and its victim, closed 

Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake 

From our long dream that justice bears no sword, 

Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves I 

So might we safely mock at what unnerves 

Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase 

That haply evil's strife with good shall cease 

Never on earth. Nay, after earth, comes peace 

Born out of life-long battle ? Man's lip curves 

With scorn : there, also, what if justice swerves 

From dealing doom, sets free by no swift stroke 

Right fettered here by wrong, but leaves life's yoke — 

Death should loose man from — fresh laid, past release ? " 

TV. 

Bernard de Mandeville, confute for me 

This parlous friend who captured or set free 

Thunderbolts at his pleasure, yet would draw 

Back, panic-stricken by some puny straw 

Thy gold-rimmed amber-headed cane had whisked 

Out of his pathway if the object risked 



26 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Encounter, 'scaped thy kick from buckled shoe ! 

As when folks heard thee in old days pooh-pooh 

Addison's tye-wig preachment, grant this friend — 

(Whose groan I hear, with guffaugh at the end 

Disposing of mock-melancholy) — grant 

His bilious mood one j^otion, ministrant 

Of homely wisdom, liealthy wit ! For, hear ! 

" With power and will, let preference appear 

By intervention ever and aye, help good 

When evil's mastery is understood 

In some plain outrage, and triumphant wrong 

Tramples weak right to nothingness : nay, long 

Ere such sad consummation bring despair 

To right's adherents, ah, what help it were 

If wrong lay strangled in the birth — each head 

Of the hatched monster promptly crushed, instead 

Of spared to gather venom ! We require 

No great experience that the inch-long worm, 

Free of our heel, would grow to vomit fire, 

And one day plague the world in dragon form. 

So should wrong merely peep abroad to meet 

Wrong's due quietus, leave our world's way safe 

For honest walking." 

V. 

Sage, once more repeat 
Instruction ! 'T is a sore to soothe not chafe. 



BERNARD BE MANDEVILLE 27 

Ah, Fabulist, what hick, could T contrive 

To coax from thee another " Grumbling Hive " ! 

My friend himself wrote fables short and sweet : 

Ask him — " Suppose the Gardener of Man's ground 

Plants for a purpose, side by side with good, 

Evil — (and that He does so — look around ! 

"What does the field show ? ) — were it understood 

That purposely the noxious plant was found 

Vexing the virtuous, poison close to food, 

If, at first stealing-forth of life in stalk 

And leaflet-promise, quick His spud should baulk 

Evil from budding foliage, bearing fruit ? 

Such timely treatment of the offending root 

Might strike the simple as wise husbandry, 

But swift sure extirpation scarce would suit 

Shrewder observers. Seed once sown thrives : why 

Frustrate its product, miss the quality 

Which sower binds himself to count upon ? 

Had seed fulfilled the destined purpose, gone 

Unhindered up to harvest — what know I 

But proof were gained that every growth of good 

Sprang consequent on evil's neighborhood ? " 

So said your shrewdness : true — so did not say 

That other sort of theorists who held 

Mere unintelligence prepared the way 

For either seed's upsprouting : you repelled 

Their notion that both kinds could sow themselves. 



PARLEYINGS WITH 

True ! but admit 't is understanding delves 

And drops each germ, what else but folly thwarts 

The doer's settled purpose ? Let the sage 

Concede a use to evil, though there starts 

Full many a burgeon thence, to disengage 

With thumb and finger lest it spoil the yield 

Too much of good's main tribute ! But our main 

Tough-tendon ed mandrake-monster — purge the field 

Of him for once and all ? It follows plain 

Who set him there to grow beholds repealed 

His primal law : His ordinance proves vain : 

And what beseems a king who cannot reign, 

But to drop sceptre valid arm should wield ? 

VI. 

Still there 's a parable " — retorts my friend — 

" Shows agriculture with a difference ! 

What of the crop and weeds which solely blend 

Because, once j^lanted, none may pluck them thence ? 

The Gardener contrived thus ? Vain pretence ! 

An enemy it was who unaw*ares 

Ruined the wheat by interspersing tares. 

Where 's our desiderated forethought ? Where 's 

Knowledge, where power and will in evidence ? 

'T is Man's-play merely ! Craft foils rectitude, 

Malignity defeats beneficence. 

And grant, at very last of all, the feud 



BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE 29 

'Twixt good and evil ends, strange thoughts intrude 

Though good he garnered safely, and good's foe 

Bundled for burning. Thoughts steal : " Even so — 

Why grant tares leave to thus o'er-top, o'ertower 

Their field-mate, boast the stalk and flaunt the flower. 

Triumph one sunny minute ? Knowledge, power, 

And will thus worked ? Man's fancy makes the fault ! 

Man, with the narrow mind, must cram inside 

His finite God's infinitude, — earth's vault 

He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide, 

Since Man may claim a right to understand 

What passes understanding. So, succinct 

And trimly set in order, to be scanned 

And scrutinized, lo — the divine lies linked 

Fast to the human, free to move as moves 

Its proper match : awhile they keep the grooves, 

Discreetly side by side together pace. 

Till sudden comes a stumble incident 

Likely enough to Man's weak-footed race, 

And he discovers — wings in rudiment, 

Such as he boasts, which full-grown, free-distent 

Would lift him skyward, fail of flight while pent 

Within humanity's restricted space. 

Abjure each fond attempt to represent 

The formless, the illimitable ! Trace 

No outline, try no hint of human face 

Or form or hand ! " 



30 PARLE YINGS WITH 

VII. 

Friend, here 's a tracing meant 

To help a guess at truth you never knew. 

Bend but those eyes now, using mind's eye too, 

And note — sufficient for all purposes — 

The ground-plan — map you long have yearned for — yes, 

Made out in markings — more what artist can ? — 

Goethe's Estate in Weimar, — just a plan ! 

A is the House, and B the Garden-gate, 

And C the Grass-plot — you 've the whole estate 

Letter by letter, down to Y the Pond, 

And Z the Pig-stye. Do you look beyond 

The algebraic signs, and captious say 

" Is A the House ? But where 's the Roof to A, 

Where's Door, where 's Window? Needs must House ha 

such ! " 
Ay, that were folly. Why so very much 
More foolish than our mortal purblind way 
Of seeking in the symbol no mere point 
To guide our gaze through what were else inane, 
But things — their solid selves ? " Is, joint by joint, 
Orion man-like, — as these dots explain 
His constellation ? Flesh composed of suns — 
How can such be ? " exclaim the simple ones. 
Look tlirough the sign to the thing signified — 
Shown nowise, point by point at best descried. 



BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE 31 

Each an orb's topmost sparkle : all beside 
Its shine is shadow : turn the orb one jot — 
Up flies the new flash to reveal 't was not 
The whole sphere late flamboyant in your ken ! 

VIII. 

' What need of symbolizing ? Fitlier men 
Would take on tongue facts — few and faint and far, 
Still facts not fancies : quite enough they are, 
That Power, that Knowledge, and that Will, — add then 
Immensity, Eternity : these jar 
Nowise with our permitted thought and speech. 
Why human attributes ? " 

A myth may teach : 
Only, who better would expound it thus 
Must be Euripides not ^schylus. 

IX. 

Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and dark, 

Embattled crags and clouds, out-broke the Sun 

Above the conscious earth, and one by one 

Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark 

His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge 

Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold, 

Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold 

On fold of vapor-swathing, like a bridge 

Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night wist 



32 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Her work done and betook herself in mist 

To marsh and hollow, there to bide her time 

Blindly in acquiescence. Everywhere 

Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime, 

Thrilling her to the heart of things : since there 

No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew, 

No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew 

Glad through the inrush — glad nor more nor less 

Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness, 

Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread, 

The universal world of creatures bred 

By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise — 

All creatures but one only : gaze for gaze. 

Joyless and thankless, who — all scowling can — 

Protests against the innumerous praises ? Man, 

Sullen and silent. 

Stand thou forth then, slate 
Thy wrong, thou sole aggrieved — disconsolate — 
While every beast, bird, reptile, insect, gay 
And glad acknowledges the bounteous day ! 

X. 

Man speaks now : " What avails Sun's earth-felt thrill 
To me ? San penetrates the ore, the plant — 
They feel and grow : perchance vnih. subtler skill 
He interfuses fly, worm, brute, until 
Each favored object pays life's ministrant 



BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE 33 

By pressing, in obedience to his will, 

Up to completion of the task prescribed, 

So stands and stays a type. Myself imbibed 

Such influence also, stood and stand complete — 

The perfect Man, — head, body, hands and feet, 

True to the pattern : but does that suffice ? 

How of my superadded mind which needs 

— Not to be, simply, but to do, and pleads 

For — more than knowledge that by some device 
Sun quickens matter : mind is nobly fain 
To realize the marvel, make — for sense 
As mind — the unseen visible, condense 

— Myself — Sun's all-pervading influence 
So as to serve the needs of mind, explain 
What now perplexes. Let the oak increase 
His corrugated strength on strength, the palm 
Lift joint by joint her fan-fruit, ball and balm, — 
Let the coiled serpent bask in bloated peace, — ■ 
The eagle, like some skyey derelict, 

Drift in the blue, suspended, glorying, — 

The lion lord it by the desert-spring, — 

What know or care they of the power which pricked 

Nothingness to perfection ? I, instead. 

When all-developed still am found a thing 

All-incomplete : for what though flesh had force 

Transcending theirs — hands able to unring 

The tightened snake's coil, eyes that could outcourse 



84 PARLE YIN GS WITH 

The eagle's soaring, voice whereat the king 

Of carnage couched discrowned ? Mind seeks to see, 

Touch, understand, by mind inside of me. 

The outside mind — whose quickening I attain 

To recognize — I only. All in vain 

Would mind address itself to render plain 

The nature of the essence. Drag what lurks 

Behind the operation — that which works 

Latently everywhere by outward proof — 

Drag that mind forth to face mine ? No ! aloof 

I solely crave that one of all the beams 

Which do Sun's work in darkness, at my will 

Should operate — myself for once have skill 

To realize the energy which streams 

Flooding the universe. Above, around, 

Beneath — why mocks that mind my own thus found 

Simply of service, when the world grows dark, 

To half-surmise — were Sun's use understood, 

I might demonstrate him supplying food. 

Warmth, life, no less the while ? To grant one spark 

Myself may deal with — make it thaw my blood 

And prompt my steps, were truer to the mark 

Of mind's requirement than a half-surmise 

That somehow secretly is operant 

A i^ower all matter feels, mind only tries 

To comprehend ! Once more — no idle vaunt 

' Man comprehends the Sun's self ! ' Mysteries 



BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE 35 

At source why probe into ? Enough : display, 
Make demonstrable, how, by night as day. 
Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all 's informed 
Equally by Sun's efflux ! — source from whence 
If just one spark I drew, full evidence 
Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned — 
San's self made palpable to Man ! " 

XI. 

Thus moaned 
Man till Prometheus helped him, — as we learn, — 
Offered an artifice whereby he drew 
Sun's rays into a focus, — plain and true, 
The very Sun in little : made fire burn 
And henceforth do Man service — glass-conglobed 
Though to a pin-point circle — all the same 
Comprising the Sun's self, but Sun disrobed 
Of that else-unconceived essential flame 
Borne by no naked sight. Shall mind's eye strive 
Achingly to companion as it may 
The supersubtle effluence, and contrive 
To follow beam and beam upon their way 
Hand-breadth by hand-breadth, till sense faint — confessed 
Frustrate, eluded by unknown unguessed 
Infinitude of action ? Idle quest ! 
Rather ask aid from optics. Sense, descry 
The spectrum — mind, infer immensity ! 



36 PARLEYINGS WITH DE MANDEVILLE 

Little ? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed — 
Which, in the large, who sees to bless ? Not I 
More than yourself : so, good my friend, keep still 
Trustful with — me ? with thee, sage Mandeville ! 



II 

WITH DANIEL BARTOLI 



WITH DANIEL BARTOLL* 



Don, the divinest women that have walked 

Our world were scarce those saints of whom we talked. 

My saint, for instance — worship if you will ! 

'T is pity poets need historians' skill : 

What legendary 's worth a chronicle ? 

TI. 

Come, now ! A great lord once upon a time 

Visited — oh a king, of kings the prime, 

To sign a treaty such as never was : 

For the king's minister had brought to pass 

That this same duke — so style him — must engage 

Two of his dukedoms as an heritage 

* A learned and ingenious writer. " Fu Gesuita e Storico della Compag- 
; onde scrisse lunghissime storie, le quali sarebbero lette se non f os- 
ripiene traboccanti di tutte le superstizioni. . . Egli vi ha ficeati dentro 
iti miracoloni, che diviene unanoia insopportabile achiunque voglia leg- 
•e quelle storie : e anche a me, non mi bast6 1' animo di proseguire molto 
mti." — Angelo Cerutti. 



40 PARLEYINGS WITH 

After his death to this exorbitant 
Graver of kingship. " Let who lacks go scant, 
Who owns much, give the more to ! " Why rebuke ? 
So bids the devil, so obeys the duke. 



in. 



Now, as it happened, at his sister's house 

_- Duchess herself — indeed the very spouse 

Of the king's uncle, —while the deed of gift 

Whereby our duke should cut his rights adrift 

Was drawing, getting ripe to sign and seal — 

What does the frozen heart but uncongeal 

And, shaming his transcendent kin and kith. 

Whom do the duke's eyes make acquaintance with? 

A girl. " W^hat, sister, may this wonder be ? " 

" Nobody ! Good as beautiful is she, 

With gifts that match her goodness, no faint flaw 

I' the white : she were the pearl you think you saw, 

But that she is — what corresponds to white? 

Some other stone, the true pearl's opposite, 

As cheap as pearls are costly. She 's - now, guess 

Her parentage ! Once - twice - thrice ? Foiled, confess 

Drugs, duke, her father deals in — faugh, the scents ! — 

Manna and senna — such medicaments 

For payment he compounds you. Stay — stay — stay ! 

I '11 have no rude speech wrong her ! Whither away, 

The hot-head ? Ah, the 'scape-grace ! She deserves 



DANIEL BARTOLl 41 

Respect — compassion, rather ! Klght it serves 

My folly, trusting secrets to a fool ! 

Already at it, is he ? She keeps cool — 

Helped by her fan's spread. Well, our state atones 

For thus much license, and words break no bones ! " 

(Hearts, though, sometimes.) 

IV. 

Next morn 't was " Reason, rate, 
Rave, sister, on till doomsday ! Sure as fate, 
I wed that woman — what a woman is 
Now that I know, who never knew till this ! " 
So swore the duke. " I wed her : once again — 
Rave, rate, and reason — spend your breath in vain ! " 



At once was made a contract firm and fast. 
Published the banns were, only marriage, last, 
Required completion when the Church's rite 
Should bless and bid depart, make happy quite 
The coupled man and wife forevermore : 
Which rite was soon to follow. Just before — 
All things at all but end — the folk o' the bride 
Flocked to a summons. Pomp the duke defied : 
"• Of ceremony — so much as empowers. 
Nought that exceeds, suits best a tie like ours — 
He smiled — "all else were mere futility. 



42 PARLEYINGS WITH 

We vow, God hears us : God and you and I — 

Let the world keep at distance ! This is why 

We choose the simjDlest forms that serve to bind 

Lover and lover of the human kind, 

No care of what degree — of kings or clowns — 

Come blood and breeding. Courtly smiles and frowns 

Miss of their mark, would idly soothe or strike 

My style and yours — in one style merged alike — 

God's man and woman merely. Long ago 

'T was rounded in my ears ' Duke, wherefore slow 

To use a privilege ? Needs must one who reigns 

Pay reigning's due : since statecraft so ordains — 

Wed for the commonweal's sake ! law prescribes 

One wife : but to submission license bribes 

Unruly nature : mistresses accept 

— Well, at discretion ! ' Prove I so inept 

A scholar, thus instructed ? Dearest, be 

Wife and all mistresses in one to me. 

Now, henceforth, and forever ! " So smiled he. 

VI. 

Good : but the minister, the crafty one, 
Got ear of what was doing — all but done — 
Not sooner, though, than the king's very self, 
Warned by the sister on how sheer a shelf 
Royalty's ship was like to split. " I bar 
The abomination ! Mix with muck mv star ? 



DANIEL BARTOLI 43 

Shall earth behold prodigiously enorbed 

An upstart marsh-born meteor sun-absorbed ? 

Nuptial me no such nuptials ! " " Past dispute, 

Majesty speaks with wisdom absolute," 

Admired the minister : " yet, all the same, 

I would we may not — while we play his game, 

The ducal meteor's — also lose our own, 

The solar monarch's : we relieve your throne 

Of an ungracious presence, like enough : 

Baulked of his project he departs in huff. 

And so cuts short — dare I remind the king ? — 

Our not so unsuccessful bargaining. 

The contract for eventual heritage 

HajDpens to pari passu reach the stage 

Attained by just this other contract, — each 

Unfixed by signature though fast in speech. 

Off goes the duke in dudgeon — off withal 

Go with him his two dukedoms past recall. 

You save a fool from tasting folly's fruit, 

Obtain small thanks thereby, and lose to boot 

Sagacity's reward. The jest is grim : 

The man will mulct you — for amercing him ^ 

Nay, for . . . permit a poor similitude ! 

A witless wight in some fantastic mood 

Would drown himself : you plunge into the wave, 

Pluck forth the undeserving : he, you save, 

Pulls you clean under also for your pains. 



44 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Sire, little need that I should tax my brains 
To help your inspiration ! " " Let him sink ! 
Always contriving " — hints the royal wink — 
" To keep ourselves dry while we claim his clothes." 

VII. 

Next day, the appointed day for plighting troths 

At eve, — so little time to lose, you see, 

Before the Church should weld indissolubly 

Bond into bond, wed these who, side by side, 

Sit each by other, bold groom, blushing bride, — 

At the prelimhiary banquet, graced 

By all the lady's kinsfolk come in haste 

To share her triumph, — lo, a thunderclap ! 

" Who importunes now ? " " Such is my mishap — 

In the king's name ! No need that any stir 

Except this lady ! " bids the minister : 

" With her I claim a word apart, no more : 

For who gainsays — a guard is at the door. 

Hold, duke ! Submit you, lady, as I bow 

To him whose mouthpiece speaks his pleasure now ! 

It well may happen I no whit arrest 

Your marriage : be it so, — we hope the best ! 

By your leave, gentles I Lady, pray you, hence ! 

Duke, with my soul and body's deference ! " 



DANIEL BARTOLI 45 

vin. 
Doors shut, mouth opens and persuasion flows 
Copiously forth. " What flesh shall dare oppose 
The king's command ? The matter in debate 
— How plain it is ! Yourself shaU arbitrate, 
Determine. Since the duke affects to rate 
His prize in you beyond all goods of earth, 
Accounts as nought old gains of rank and birth. 
Ancestral obligation, recent fame, 
(We know his feats) — nay, ventures to disclaim 
Our will and pleasure almost — by report — 
Waives in your favor dukeliness, in short, — 
We — ('t is the king speaks) — who might forthwith stay 
Such suicidal purpose, brush away 

A bad example shame would else record, 

Lean to indulgence rather. At his word 

We take the duke : allow him to complete 

The cession of his dukedoms, leave our feet 

Their footstool when his own head, safe in vault, 

Sleeps sound. Nay, would the duke repair his fault 

Handsomely, and our forfeited esteem 

Recover, — what if wisely he redeem 

The past, — in earnest of good faith, at once 

Grive us such jurisdiction for the nonce 

\s may suffice — prevent occasion slip — 

^nd constitute our actual ownership ? 



46 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Concede this — straightway be the marriage blessed 

By warrant of this paper ! Things at rest, 

This paper duly signed, down drops the bar, 

To-morrow you become — from what you are, 

The druggist's daughter — not the duke's mere spouse, 

But the king's own adopted : heart and house 

Open to you — the idol of a court 

* Which heaven might copy ' — sing our poet-sort. 

In this emergency, on you depends 

The issue : plead what bliss the king intends ! 

Should the duke frown, should arguments and prayers, 

Nay, tears if need be, prove in vain, — who cares ? 

We leave the duke to his obduracy, 

Companionless, — you, madam, follow me 

Without, where divers of the body-guard 

Wait signal to enforce the king's award 

Of strict seclusion : over you at least 

Vibratingly the sceptre threats increased 

Precipitation ! How avert its crash ? " 

IX. 

" Re-enter, sir ! A hand that 's calm, not rash. 
Averts it ! " quietly the lady said. 
" Yourself shall witness." 

At the table's head 
Where, mid the hushed guests, still the duke sat glued 
In blank bewilderment, his spouse pursued 
Her speech to end — syllabled quietude. 



DANIEL BARTOLI 47 



Duke, I, your duchess of a day, could take 

The hand you proffered me for love's sole sake, 

Conscious my love matched yours ; as you, myself 

Would waive, when need were, all but love — from pelf 

To potency. What fortune brings about 

Haply in some far future, finds me out, 

Faces me on a sudden here and now. 

The better ! Read — if beating heart allow — 

Read this, and bid me rend to rags the shame ! 

I and your conscience — hear and grant our claim ! 

Never dare alienate God's gift you hold 

Simply in trust for Him ! Choose muck for gold ? 

Could you so stumble in your choice, cajoled 

By what I count my least of worthiness 

— The youth, the beauty, — you renounce them — yes, 

With all that 's most too : love as well you lose. 

Slain by what slays in you the honor ! Choose ! 

Dear — yet my husband — dare I love you yet ? " 

XI. 

How the duke's wrath o'erboiled, — words, words, and yet 

More words, — I spare you such fool's fever-fret. 

They were not of one sort at all, one size. 

As souls go — he and she. 'Tis said, the eyes 

Of all the lookers-on let tears fall fast. 



48 PARLE YINGS WITH 

The minister was mollified at last : 

" Take a day, — two days even, ere through pride 

You perish, — two days' counsel — then decide ! " 

XII. 

" If I shall save his honor and my soul ? 
Husband, — this one last time, — you tear the scroll ? 
Farewell, duke ! Sir, I follow in your train ! " 



XIII. 

So she went forth : they never met again, 

The duke and she. The world paid compliment 

(Is it worth noting ?) when, next day, she sent 

Certain gifts back — " jewelry fit to deck 

Whom you call wife." I know not round what neck 

They took to sparkling, in good time — weeks thence. 

XIV. 

Of all which was a pleasant consequence, 
So much and no more — that a fervid youth. 
Big-hearted boy, — but ten years old, in truth, — 
Laid this to heart and loved, as boyhood can. 
The unduchessed lady : boy and lad grew man : 
He loved as man perchance may : did meanwhile 
Good soldier-service, managed to beguile \ 

The years, no few, until he found a chance : 
Then, as at trumpet-summons to advance, 



DANIEL BARTOLI 49 

Outbroke the love that stood at arms so long, 
Brooked no withstanding longer. They were wed. 
Whereon from camp and court alike he fled, 
Renounced the sun-king, dropped off into night, 
Lost evermore, a ruined satellite : 
And, oh, the exquisite deliciousness 
That lapped him in obscurity ! You guess 
Such joy is fugitive : she died full soon. 
He did his best to die — as sun, so moon 
Left him, turned dusk to darkness absolute. 
Failing of death — why, saintship seemed to suit : 
Yes, your sort, Don ! He trembled on the verge 
Of monkhood : trick of cowl and taste of scourge 
He tried : then, kicked not at the pricks perverse. 
But took again, for better or for worse, 
The old way in the world, and, much the same 
Man o' the outside, fairly played life's game. 

XV. 

Now, Saint Scholastica, what time she fared 

In Paynimrie, behold, a lion glared 

Right in her path ! Her waist she promptly strips 

Of girdle, binds his teeth within his lips. 

And, leashed all lamblike, to the Soldan's court 

Leads him." Ay, many a legend of the sort 

Do you praiseworthily authenticate : 

Spare me the rest. This much of no debate 



50 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Admits : my lady flourished in grand days 
When to be duchess was to dance the hays 
Up, down, across the heaven amid its host : 
While to be hailed the sun's own self almost — 
So close the kinship — was — was — 

Saint, for this.) 
Be yours the feet I stoop to — kneel and kiss ! 
So human ? Then the mouth too, if you will ! 
Thanks to no legend but a chronicle. 

XVI. 

One leans to like the duke, too : up we '11 patch 
Some sort of saintship for him — not to match 
Hers — but man's best and woman's worst amount 
So nearly to the same thing, that we count 
In man a miracle of faithfulness 
If, while unfaithful somewhat, he lay stress 
On the main fact that love, when love indeed, 
Is wholly solely love from first to last — 
Truth — all the rest a lie. Too likely, fast 
Enough that necklace went to grace the throat 
— Let 's say, of such a dancer as makes doat 
The senses when the soul is satisfied — 
Trogalia, say the Greeks — a sweetmeat tried 
Approvingly by sated tongue and teeth. 
Once body's proper meal consigned beneath 
Such unconsidered munching. 



DANIEL BARTOLI 61 

XVII. 

Fancy's flight 
Makes me a listener when, some sleepless night, 
The duke reviewed his memories, and aghast 
Found that the Present intercepts the Past 
With such effect as when a cloud enwraps 
The moon and, moon-suffused, plays moon perhaps 
To who walks under, till comes, late or soon, 
A stumble : up he looks, and lo, the moon 
Calm, clear, convincingly herself once more ! 
How could he 'scape the cloud that thrust between 
Him and effulgence ? Speak, fool — duke, I mean ! 

XVIII. 

" Who bade you come, brisk-marching bold she-shape, 
A terror with those black-balled worlds of eyes. 

That black hair bristling solid-built from nape 
To crown it coils about ? O dread surmise ! 

Take, tread on, trample under past escape 

Your capture, spoil and trophy ! Do — devise 

Insults for one who, fallen once, ne'er shall rise ! 

" Mock on, triumphant o'er the prostrate shame ! 
Laugh ' Here lies he among the false to Love — 
Love's loyal liegeman once : the very same 

Who, scorning his weak fellows, towered above 



52 PARLEYING^ WITH 

Inconstancy : yet why his faith defame ? 

Our eagle's victor was at least no dove, 
No dwarfish knight picked up our giant's glove — 

*' ' When, putting prowess to the proof, faith urged 

Her champion to the challenge : had it chanced 
That merely virtue, wisdom, beauty — merged 

All in one woman — merely these advanced 
Their claim to conquest, — hardly had he purged 

His mind of memories, dearnesses enhanced 
Rather than harmed by death, nor, disentranced, 

i 
" ' Promptly had he abjured the old pretence 

To prove his kind's superior — first to last 
Display erect on his heart's eminence 

An altar to the never-dying Past. 
For such feat faith might boast fit play of fence 

And easily disarm the iconoclast 
Called virtue, wisdom, beauty : impudence 

" ' Fought in their stead, and how could faith but fall ? 

There came a bold she-shape brisk-marching, bent 1 
No inch of her imperious stature, tall 

As some war-engine from whose top was sent 
One shattering volley out of eye's black ball, 

And prone lay faith's defender ! ' Mockery spent I 
Malice discharged in full ? In that event, I 



DANIEL BARTOLI 53 

'* My queenly impudence, I cover close, 

I wrap me round with love of your black hair, 
Black eyes, black every wicked inch of those 

Limbs' war-tower tallness : so much truth lives there 
'Neath the dead heap of lies. And yet — who knows ? 
What if such things are ? No less, such things were. 
Then was the man your match whom now you dare 

'^ Treat as existent still. A second truth ! 

They held — this heajD of lies you rightly scorn — 
A man who had approved himself in youth 

More than a match for — you ? for sea-foam-born 
Venus herself : you conquer him forsooth ? 

'T is me his ghost : he died since left and lorn, 
As needs must Samson when his hair is shorn. 

" Some day, and soon, be sure himself will rise, 

Called into life by her who long ago 
Left his soul whiling time in flesh-disguise. 

Ghosts tired of waiting can play tricks, you know ! 
Tread, trample me — such sport we ghosts devise. 

Waiting the morn-star's reappearance — though 
You think we vanish scared by the cock's crow." 



Ill 
WITH CHRISTOPHER SMART 



WITH CHRISTOPHER SMART 



It seems as if ... or did the actual chance 

Startle me and perplex ? Let truth be said ! 

How might this happen ? Dreaming, blindfold led 

By visionary hand, did soul's advance 

Precede my body's, gain inheritance 

Of fact by fancy — so that when I read 

At length with waking eyes your Song, instead 

Of mere bewilderment, with me first glance 

Was but full recognition that in trance 

Or merely thought's adventure some old day 

Of dim and done-with boyishness, or — well, 

Why might it not have been, the miracle 

Broke on me as I took my sober way 

Through veritable regions of our earth 

And made discovery, many a wondrous one ? 

II. 

Anyhow, fact or fancy, such its birth : 

I was exploring some huge house, had gone 



PARLEYINGS WITH 

Through room and room complacently, no dearth 

Anywhere of the signs of decent taste, 

Adequate culture : wealth had run to waste 

Nowise, nor penury was proved by stint : 

All showed the Golden Mean without a hint 

Of brave extravagance that breaks the rule. 

The master of the mansion was no fool 

Assuredly, no genius just as sure ! 

Safe mediocrity had scorned the lure 

Of now too much and now too little cost, 

And satisfied me sight was never lost 

Of moderate design's accomplishment 

In calm completeness. On and on I went, 

With no more hope than fear of what came next, 

Till lo, I push a door, sudden uplift 

A hanging, enter, chance upon a shift 

Indeed of scene ! So — thus it is thou deck'st, 

High heaven, our low earth's brick-and-mortar work? 

III. 

It was the Chapel. That a star, from murk 
Which hid, should flashingly emerge at last, 
Were small surprise : but from broad day I passed 
Into a presence that turned shine to shade. 
There fronted me the Rafael Mother-Maid, 
Never to whom knelt votarist in shrine 
By Nature's bounty helped, by Art's divine 



CHRISTOPHER SMART 69 

More varied — beauty with magnificence — 

Than this : from floor to roof one evidence 

Of how far earth may rival heaven. No niche 

Where glory was not prisoned to enrich 

Man's gaze with gold and gems, no space but glowed 

With color, gleamed with carving — hues which owed 

Their outburst to a brush the painter fed 

With rainbow-substance — rare shapes never wed 

To actual flesh and blood, which, brain-born once, 

Became the sculptor's dowry, Art's response 

To earth's despair. And all seemed old yet new : 

Youth, — in the marble's curve, the canvas' hue. 

Apparent, — wanted not the crowning thrill 

Of age the consecrator. Hands long still 

Had worked here — could it be, what lent them skill 

Retained a power to supervise, protect. 

Enforce new lessons with the old, connect 

Our life with theirs ? No merely modern touch 

Told me that here the artist, doing much, 

Elsewhere did more, perchance does better, lives — 

So needs must learn. 

IV. 

Well, these provocatives 
Having fulfilled their office, forth I went 
Big with anticipation — well-nigh fear — 
Of what next room and next for startled eyes 



CO PARLEYINGS WITH 

Might have in store, surprise beyond surprise. 

Next room and next and next — what followed here ? 

Why, nothing ! not one object to arrest 

My passage — everywhere too manifest 

The previous decent null and void of best 

And worst, mere ordinary right and fit. 

Calm commonplace which neither missed, nor hit 

Inch-high, inch-low, the placid mark proposed. 

V. 

Armed with this instance, have I diagnosed 
Your case, my Christopher ? The man was sound 
And sane at starting : all at once the ground 
Gave way beneath his step, a certain smoke 
Curled up and caught him, or perhaps down broke 
A fireball wrapping flesh and spirit both 
In conflagration. Then — as heaven were loth 
To linger — let earth understand too well 
How heaven at need can operate — off fell 
The flame-robe, and the untransfigured man 
Resumed sobriety, — as he began. 
So did he end nor alter pace, not he ! 

VI. 

Now, what I fain would know is — could it be 
That he — whoe'er he was that furnished forth 
The Chapel, making thus, from South to North, 



CHRISTOPHER SMART 61 

Rafael touch Leighton, Michelagnolo 

Join Watts, was found but once combining so 

The elder and the younger, taking stand 

On Art's supreme, — or that yourself who sang 

A Song where flute-breath silvers trumpet-clang, 

And stations you for once on either hand 

With Milton and with Keats, empowered to claim 

Affinity on just one point — (or blame 

Or praise my judgment, thus it fronts you full) — 

How came it you resume the void and null. 

Subside to insignificance, — live, die 

— Proved plainly two mere mortals who drew nigh 

One moment — that, to Art's best hierarchy. 

This, to the superhuman poet-pair ? 

What if, in one point only, then and there 

The otherwise all-unapproachable 

Allowed impingement ? Does the sphere pretend 

To span the cube's breadth, cover end to end ' 

The plane with its embrace ? No, surely ! Still, 

Contact is contact, sphere's touch no whit less 

Than cube's superimposure. Such success 

Befell Smart only out of throngs between 

Milton and Keats that donned the singing-dress — 

Smart, solely of such songmen, 23ierced the screen 

'Twixt thing and word, lit language straight from soul, — 

Left no fine film-flake on the naked coal 

Live from the censer — shapely or uncouth, 



62 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Fire-suffused through and through, one blaze of truth 

Undeadened by a lie, — (you have my mind) — 

For, think ! this blaze outleapt with black behind 

And blank before, when Hayley and the rest . . . 

But let the dead successors worst and best 

Bury their dead : with life be my concern — 

Yours with the fire-flame : what I fain would learn 

Is just — (suppose me haply ignorant 

Down to the common knowledge, doctors vaunt) 

Just this — why only once the fire-flame was : 

No matter if the marvel came to pass 

The way folks judged — if power too long suppressed 

Broke loose and maddened, as the vulgar guessed, 

Or simply brain-disorder (doctors said), 

A turmoil of the particles disturbed. 

Brain's workaday performance in your head, 

Spurred spirit to wild action health had curbed, 

And so verse issued in a cataract 

Whence prose, before and after, unperturbed 

Was wont to wend its way. Concede the fact 

That here a poet was who always could — 

Never before did — never after would — 

Acliieve the feat : how were such fact explained ? 



VII. 

Was it that when, by rarest chance, there fell 
Disguise from Nature, so that Truth remained 



CHRISTOPHER SMART 63 

Naked, and whoso saw for once could tell 

Us others of her majesty and might 

In large, her lovelinesses infinite 

In little, — straight you used the power wherewith 

Sense, penetrating as through rind to pith 

Each object, thoroughly revealed might view 

And comprehend the old things thus made new, 

So that while eye saw, soul to tongue could trust 

Thing which struck word out, and once more adjust 

Real vision to right language, till heaven's vault 

Pompous with sunset, storm-stirred sea's assault 

On the swilled rock-ridge, earth's embosomed brood 

Of tree and flower and weed, w4th all the life 

That flies or swims or crawls, in peace or strife, 

Above, below, — each had its note and name 

For Man to know by, — Man who, now — the same 

As erst in Eden, needs that all he sees 

Be named him ere he note by what degrees 

Of strength and beauty to its end Design 

Ever thus operates — (your thought and mine, 

No matter for the many dissident) — 

So did you sing your Song, so truth found vent 

In words for once with you ? 

VIII. /-^ 

Then — back was furled 
The robe thus thrown aside, and straight the world 



64 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Darkened into the old oft-catalogued 

Repository of things tliat sky, wave, land. 

Or show or hide, clear late, accretion-clogged 

Now, just as long ago, by tellings and 

Retellings to satiety, which strike 

Muffled upon the ear's drum. Very like 

None was so startled as yourself when friends 

Came, hailed your fast-returning wits : " Health mends 

Importantly, for — to be plain with you — 

This scribble on the wall was done — in lieu 

Of pen and paper — with — ha, ha ! — your key 

Denting it on the wainscot ! Do you see 

How wise our caution was ? Thus much we stopped 

Of babble that had else grown print : and lopped 

From your trim bay-tree this unsightly bough — 

Smart's who translated Horace ! Write us now " 

Why, what Smart did write — never afterward 

One line to show that he, who paced the sward. 

Had reached the zenith from his madhouse cell. 

IX. 

Was it because you judged (I know full well 

You never had the fancy) — judged — as some - 

That who makes poetry must reproduce 

Thus ever and thus only, as they come. 

Each strength, each beauty, everywhere diffuse 

Throughout creation, so that eye and ear, 



CHRISTOPHER SMART 65 

Seeing and hearing, straight shall recognize, 
At touch of just a trait, the strength appear, — 
Suggested by a line's lapse see arise 
All evident the beauty, — fresh surprise 
Startling at fr-esh achievement ? " So, indeed, 
Wallows the whale's bulk in the waste of brine, 
Nor otherwise its feather-tufts make fine 
Wild Virgin's Bower when stars faint off to seed ! " 
(My prose — your poetry I dare not give. 
Purpling too much my mere gray argument.) 

— Was it because you judged — when fugitive 
Was glory found, and wholly gone and spent 
Such power of startling up deaf ear, blind eye, 
At truth's appearance, — that you humbly bent 
The head and, bidding vivid work good-by, 
Doffed lyric dress, and trod the world once more 
A drab-clothed decent proseman as before ? 
Strengths, beauties, by one word's flash thus laid bare 

— That was effectual service : made aware 

Of strengths and beauties, Man but hears the text. 

Awaits your teaching. Nature ? What comes next ? 

Why all the strength and beauty ? — to be shown 

Thus in one word's flash, thenceforth let alone 

By Man who needs must deal with aught that 's known 

Never so lately and so little ? Friend, 

First give us knowledge, then appoint its use ! 

Strength, beauty are the means : ignore their end ? 



PARLEYINGS WITH 

As well you stopped at proving how profuse 
Stones, sticks, nay stubble lie to left and right 
Ready to help the builder, — careless quite 
If he should take, or leave the same to strew 
Earth idly, — as by word's flash bring in view 
Strength, beauty, then bid who beholds the same 
Go on beholding. Why gains unemployed ? 
Nature was made to be by Man enjoyed 
First ; followed duly by enjoyment's fruit, 
Instruction — haply leaving joy behind : 
And you, the instructor, would you slack pursuit 
Of the main prize, as poet help mankind 
Just to enjoy, there leave them? Play the fool, 
Abjuring a superior privilege ? 
Please simply when your function is to rule — 
By thought incite to deed ? From edge to edge 
Of earth's round, strength and beauty everywhere 
Pullulate — and must you particularize 
All, each and every api3arition ? Spare 
Yourself and us the trouble ! Ears and eyes 
"Want so much strength and beauty, and no less 
Nor more, to learn life's lesson by. Oh, yes — 
The other method 's favored in our day ! 
The end ere the beginning : as you may 
Master the heavens before you study earth, 
Make you familiar with the meteor's birth 
Ere you descend to scrutinize the rose I 



CHRISTOPHER SMART 67 

I say, o'erstep no least one of the rows 

That lead man from the bottom where he plants 

Foot first of all, to life's last ladder-top : 

Arrived there, vain enough will seem the vaunts 

Of those who say — " We scale the skies, then drop 

To earth — to find, how all things there are loth 

To answer heavenly law : we understand 

The meteor's course, and lo, the rose's growth — 

How other than should be by law's command ! " 

Would not you tell such — " Friends, beware lest fume 

Offuscate sense : learn earth first ere presume 

To teach heaven legislation. Law must be 

Active in earth or nowhere : earth you see, — 

Or there or not at all, Will, Power and Love 

Admit discovery, — as below, above 

Seek next law's confirmation ! But reverse 

The order, where 's the wonder things grow worse 

Than, by the law your fancy formulates. 

They should be ? Cease from anger at the fates 

Which thwart themselves so madly. Live and learn. 

Not first learn and then live, is our concern. 



IV 
WITH GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON 



WITH GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON 



Ah, George Bubb Dodington Lord Melcombe, — no, 
Yours was the wrong way ! — always understand, 
Supposing that permissibly you planned 
How statesmanship — your trade — in outward show 
Might figure as inspired by simple zeal 
For serving country, king and commonweal, 
(Though service tire to death the body, tease 
The soul from out an o'ertasked patriot-drudge) 
And yet should prove zeal's outward show agrees 
In all respects — right reason being judge — 
With inward care that, while the statesman spends 
Body and soul thus freely for the sake 
Of public good, his private welfare take 
No harm by such devotedness. Intends 
Scripture aught else — let captious folk enquire — 
Which teaches " Laborers deserve their hire. 
And who neglects his household bears the bell 
Away of sinning from an infidel " ? 
WiseUer would fools that carp bestow a thought 



PARLEYINGS WITH 

How birds build nests ; at outside, roughly wrought, 
Twig knots with twig, loam plasters up each chink, 
Leaving the inmate rudely lodged — you think ? 
Peep but inside ! That specious rude-and-rough 
Covers a domicile where downy fluff 
Embeds the ease-deserving architect, 
Who toiled and moiled not merely to effect 
'Twixt sprig and spray a stop-gap in the teeth 
Of wind and weather, guard what swung beneath 
From upset only, but contrived himself 
A snug interior, warm and soft and sleek. 
Of what material ? Oh, for that, you seek 
How nature prompts each volatile ! Thus '■ — pelf 
Smoothens the human mudlark's lodging, power 
Demands some hardier wrappage to embrace 
Robuster heart-beats : rock, not tree nor tower, 
Contents the building eagle : rook shoves close 
To brother rook on branch, while crow morose 
AjDart keeps balance perched on topmost bough. 
No sort of bird but suits his taste somehow : 
Nay, Darwin tells of such as love the bower — 
His bower-birds opportunely yield us yet 
The lacking instance when at loss to get 
A feathered parallel to what we find 
The secret motor of some mighty mind 
That worked such wonders — all for vanity ! 
Worked them to haply figure in the eye 



GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON 73 

Of intimates as first of — doers' kind ? 
Actors', that work in earnest sportively, 
Paid by a sourish smile. How says the Sage ? 
Birds born to strut prepare a platform-stage 
With sparkling stones and speckled shells, all sorts 
Of slimy rubbish, odds and ends and orts, 
Whereon to pose and posture and engage 
The priceless female simper. 

II. 

I have gone 
Thus into detail, George Bubb Dodington, 
Lest, when I take yon presently to task 
For the wrong way of working, you should ask 
" What fool conjectures that profession means 
Performance ? that who goes behind the scenes 
Finds, — acting over, — still the soot-stuff screens 
Othello's visage, still the self-same cloak's 
Bugle-briglit-blackness half reveals half chokes 
Hamlet's emotion, as ten minutes since ? 
No, each resumes his garb, stands — Moor or prince — 
Decently draped : just so with statesmanship ! 
All outside show, in short, is sham — why wince ? 
Concede me — while our parley lasts ! You trip 
Afterwards — lay but this to heart ! (there lurks 
Somewhere in all of us a lump which irks 
Somewhat the spriteliest-scheming brain that 's bent 



PARLEYINGS WITH 

On brave adventure, would but heart consent !) 

— Here trip you, that — your aim allowed as right — 
Your means thereto were wrong. Come, we, this night, 
Profess one purpose, hold one principle. 

Are at odds only as to — not the will 
But way of winning solace for ourselves 

— No matter if the ore for which zeal delves 
Be gold or coprolite, while zeal's pretence 

Is — we do good to men at — whose expense 

But ours ? who tire the body, tease the soul. 

Simply that, running, we may reach fame's goal 

And wi'eathe at last our brows with bay — the State's 

Disinterested slaves, nay — please the Fates — 

Saviors and nothing less : such lot has been ! 

Statesmanship triumphs pedestalled, serene, — 

O happy consummation ! — brought about 

By managing with skill the rabble-rout 

For which we labor (never mind the name — 

People or populace, for praise or blame) 

Making them understand — their heaven, their hell, 

Their every hope and fear is ours as well. 

Man's cause — what other can we have at heart ? 

Whence follows that the necessary part 

High o'er Man's head we play, — and freelier breathe 

Just that the multitude which gasps beneath 

May reach the level where unstifled stand 

Ourselves at vantage to put forth a hand, 



GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON 75 

Assist the prostrate public. 'T is by right 

Merely of such pretence, we reach the height 

Where storms abound, to brave — nay, court their stress, 

Though all too well aware — of pomp the less. 

Of peace the more ! But who are we, to spurn 

For peace' sake, duty's pointing ? Up, then — earn 

Albeit no prize we may but martyrdom ! 

Now, such fit height to launch salvation from. 

How get and gain ? Since help must needs be craved 

By would-be saviors of the else-unsaved. 

How coax them to co-operate, lend lift, 

Kneel down and let us mount ? 

III. 

You say " Make shift 
By sham — the harsh word : preach and teach, persuade 
Somehow the Public — not despising aid 
Of salutary artifice — we seek 

Solely their good : our strength would raise the weak, 
Our cultivated knowledge supplement 
Their rudeness, rawness : why to us were lent 
Ability except to come in use ? 
Who loves his kind must by all means induce 
That kind to let that love play freely, press 
In Man's behalf to full performance ! " 



76 PARLEYING S WITH 

IV. 

Yes — 
Yes, George, we know ! — whereat they hear, believe, 
And bend the knee, and on the neck receive 
Who fawned and cringed to purpose ? Not so, George ! 
Try simple falsehood on shrewd folks who forge 
Lies of superior fashion day by day 
And hour by hour ? With craftsmen versed as they 
What chance of competition when the tools 
Only a novice wields ? Are knaves such fools ? 
Disinterested patriot, spare your tongue 
The tones thrice-silvery, cheek save smiles it flung 
Pearl-like profuse to swine — a herd, whereof 
No unit needs be taught, his neighbor's trough 
Scarce holds for who but grunts and whines the husks 
Due to a wrinkled snout that shows sharp tusks. 
No animal — much less our lordly Man — 
Obeys its like : with strength all rule began. 
The stoutest awes the pasture. Soon succeeds 
Discrimination, — nicer power Man needs 
To rule him than is bred of bone and thew ; 
Intelligence must move strength's self. This too 
Lasts but its time : the multitude at length 
Looks inside for intelligence and strength 
And finds them here and there to pick and choose : 
" All at your service, mine, see I " Ay, but who's 



GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON 11 

My George, at this late day, to make his boast 

" In strength, inteUigence, I rule the roast, 

Beat, all and some, the ungi'aced who crowd your ranks ? " 

" Oh, but I love, would lead you, gain your thanks 

By unexampled yearning for Man's sake — 

Passion that solely waits your help to take 

Effect in action ! " George, which one of us 

But holds with his own heart communion thus : 

" I am, if not of men the first and best, 

Still — to receive enjoyment — properest ; 

Which since by force I cannot, nor by wit 

Most likely — craft must serve in place of it. 

Flatter, cajole ! If so I bring within 

My net the gains which wit and force should win, 

What hinders ? " 'T is a trick we know of old : 

Try, George, some other of tricks manifold ! 

The multitude means mass and mixture — right ! 

Are mixtures simple, pray, or composite ? 

Dive into Man, your medley : see the waste I 

Sloth-stifled genius, energy disgraced 

By ignorance, high aims with sorry skill. 

Will without means and means in want of will 

— Sure we might fish, from out the mothers' sons 

That welter thus, a dozen Dodingtons ! 

Wliy call up Dodington, and none beside. 

To take his seat upon our backs and ride 

As statesman conquering and to conquer ? Well, 



PARLEYINGS WITH 

The last expedient, which must needs excel 

Those old ones — this it is, — at any rate 

To-day's conception thus I formulate : 

As simple force has been replaced, just so 

Must simple wit be : men have got to know 

Such wit as what you boast is nowise held 

The wonder once it was, but, paralleled 

Too plentifully, counts not, — puts to shame 

Modest possessors like yourself who claim, 

By virtue of it merely, power and place 

— Which means the sweets of office. Since our race 

Teems with the like of you, some special gift, 

Your very own, must coax our hands to lift, 

And backs to bear you : is it just and right 

To privilege your nature ? 



" State things quite 
Other than so " — make answer ! " I pretend 
No such community with men. Perpend 
My key to domination ! Who would use 
Man for his pleasure needs must introduce 
The element that awes Man. Once for all. 
His nature owns a Supernatural 
In fact as well as phrase — wliich found must be 
— Where, in this doubting age ? Old mystery 
Has served its turn — seen throug-h and sent adrift 



GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON 7 

To nothingness : new wizard-craft makes shift 

Nowadays shorn of help by robe and book, — 

Otherwise, elsewhere, for success must look 

Than chalked-ring, incantation-gibberisli. 

Somebody comes to conjure : that 's he ? Pish ! 

He 's like the roomful of rapt gazers, — there 's 

No sort of difference in the garb he wears 

From ordinary dressing, — gesture, speech, 

Deportment, just like those of all and each 

That eye their master of the minute. Stay ! 

What of the something — call it how you may — 

Uncanny in the — quack ? That 's easy said ! 

Notice how the Professor turns no head 

And yet takes cognizance of who accepts, 

Denies, is puzzled as to the adept's 

Supremacy, yields up or lies in wait 

To trap the trickster ! Doubtless, out of date 

Are dealings with the devil : yet, the stir 

Of mouth, its smile half smug half sinister. 

Mock-modest boldness masked in diffidence, — 

What if the man have — who knows how or whence ? — 

Confederate potency unguessed by us — 

Prove no such cheat as he pretends ? 

YI. 

Ay, thus 
Had but my George played statesmanship's new card 



PARLEYINGS WITH 

That carries all ! " Since we " — avers the Bard — 

" All of us have one human heart " — as good 

As say — by all of us is understood 

Right and wrong, true and false — in rough, at least, 

We own a common conscience. God, man, beast — 

How should we qualify the statesman-shape 

I fancy standing with our world agape ? 

Disguise, flee, fight against with tooth and nail 

The outrageous designation ! " Quack " men quail 

Before ? You see, a little year ago 

They heard him thunder at the thing which, lo, 

To-day he vaunts for unscathed, while what erst 

Heaven-high he lauded, lies hell-low, accursed ! 

And yet where 's change ? Who, awe-struck, cares to point 

Critical finger at a dubious joint 

In armor, true oes triplex, breast and back 

Binding about, defiant of attack, 

An imperturbability that 's — well. 

Or innocence or impudence — how tell 

One from the other ? Could ourselves broach lies, 

Yet brave mankind with those unaltered eyes. 

Those lips that keep the quietude of truth ? 

Dare we attempt the like ? What quick uncouth 

Disturbance of thy smug economy, 

O coward visage ! Straight would all descry 

Back on the man's brow the boy's blush once more ! 

No : he goes deeper — could our sense explore — 



GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON 81 

Finds conscience beneath conscience such as ours. 

Genius is not so rare, — prodigious powers — 

Well, others boast such, — but a power like this 

Mendacious intrepidity — quid vis ? 

Besides, imposture plays another game. 

Admits of no diversion from its aim 

Of captivating hearts, sets zeal aflare 

In every shape at every turn, — nowhere 

Allows subsidence into ash. By stress 

Of what does guile succeed but earnestness. 

Earnest word, look and gesture ? Touched with aught 

But earnestness, the levity were fraught 

With ruin to guile's film-work. Grave is guile ; 

Here no act wants its qualifying smile, 

Its covert pleasantry to neutralize 

The outward ardor. Can our chief despise 

Even while most he seems to adulate ? 

As who should say " What though it be my fate 

To deal with fools ? Among the crowd must lurk 

Some few with faculty to judge my work 

Spite of its way which suits, they understand, 

The crass majority : — the Sacred Band, 

No duping them forsooth ! " So tells a touch 

Of subintelligential nod and wink — 

Turning foes friends. Coarse flattery moves the gorge : 

Mine were the mode to awe the many, George ! 

They guess you half despise them while most bent 



82 PARLEYINGS WITH 

On demonstrating that your sole intent 

Strives for their service. Sneer at them ? Yourself 

'T is you disparage, — tricksy as an elf, 

Scorning what most you strain to bring to pass, 

Laughingly careless, — triply cased in brass, — 

"While pushing strenuous to the end in view. 

What follows ? Why, you formulate within 

The vulgar headpiece this conception : " Win 

A master-mind to serve us needs we must, 

One who, from motives we but take on trust, 

Acts strangelier — haply wiseher than we know — 

Stronglier, for certain. Did he say ' I throw 

Aside my good for yours, in all I do 

Care nothing for myself and all for you ' — 

We should both understand and disbelieve : 

Said he ' Your good I laugh at in my sleeve, 

My own it is I solely labor at. 

Pretending yours the while ' — that, even that, 

We, understanding well, give credence to. 

And so will none of it. But here 't is through 

Our recognition of his service, wage 

Well earned by work, he mounts to such a stage 

Above competitors as all save Bubb 

Would agonize to keep. Yet — here 's the rub — 

So slightly does he hold by our esteem 

Which solely fixed him fast there, that we seem 

Mocked every minute to our face, by gibe 



GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON 83 

And jest — scorn insuppressive : what ascribe 
The rashness to ? Our pay and praise to boot — 
Do these avail him to tread underfoot 
Something inside us all and each, that stands 
Somehow instead of somewhat which commands 
' Lie not ' ? Folks fear to jeopardize their soul, 
Stumble at times, walk straight upon the whole, — 
That 's nature's simple instinct : what may be 
The portent here, the influence such as we 
Are strangers to ? " — 

VII. 

Exact the thing I call 
Man's despot, just the Supernatural 
Which, George, was wholly out of — far beyond 
Your theory and practice. You had conned 
But to reject the precept " To succeed 
In gratifying selfishness and greed, 
Asseverate such qualities exist 
Nowise within yourself ! then make acquist 
By all means, with no sort of fear ! " Alack, 
That well-worn lie is obsolete ! Fall back 
On still a working pretext — " Hearth and Home, 
The Altar, love of England, hate of Rome " — 
That 's serviceable lying — that perchance 
Had screened you decently : but 'ware advance 
By one step more in perspicacity 



84 PARLEYINGS WITH DODINGTON 

Of these our dupes ! At length they get to see 
As through the earUer, this the latter plea — 
And find the greed and selfishness at source ! 
' Ventum est ad triarios : last resource 
Should be to what but — exquisite disguise 
Disguise-abjuring, truth that looks like lies, 
Frankness so sure to meet with unbelief ? 
Say — you hold in contempt — not them in chief — 
But first and foremost your own self I No use 
In men but to make sport for you, induce 
The puppets now to dance, now stand stock-still, 
Now knock their heads together, at your will 
For will's sake only — while each plays his part 
Submissive : why ? through terror at the heart : 
" Can it be — this bold man, whose hand we saw 
Openly pull the wires, obeys some law . 

Quite above Man's — nay, God's ? " On face fall they. \ 
This was the secret missed, again I say, \ 

Out of your power to grasp conception of, } 

Much less employ to purpose. Hence the scoff 
That greets your very name : folks see but one 
Fool more, as well as knave, in Dodington. 



V 
WITH FRANCIS FURINI 



WITH FRANCIS FURINI 



Nay, tliat^ Furini, never I at least 

Mean to believe ! What man you were I know, 

While you walked Tuscan earth, a painter-priest. 

Something about two hundred years ago. 

Priest — you did duty punctual as the sun 

That rose and set above Saint Sano's church, 

Blessing Mugello : of your flock not one 

But showed a whiter fleece because of smirch. 

Your kind hands wiped it clear from : were they poor ? 

Bounty broke bread apace, — did marriage lag 

For just the want of moneys that ensure 

Fit hearth-and-home provision ? — straight your bag 

Unplumped itself, — reached hearts by way of palms 

Goodwill's shake had but tickled. All about 

Mugello valley, felt some parish qualms 

At worship offered in bare walls without 

The comfort of a picture ? — prompt such need 

Our painter would supply, and throngs to see 

Witnessed that goodness — no unholy greed 



PARLEYINGS WITH 

Of gain — had coaxed from Don Furini — he 
Whom princes might in vain implore to toil 
For worldly profit — such a masterpiece. 
Brief — priest, you poured profuse God's wine and oil 
Praiseworthily, I know : shall praising cease 
When, priestly vesture put aside, mere man, 
You stand for judgment ? Rather — what acclaim 
— " Good son, good brother, friend in whom we scan 
No fault nor flaw " — salutes Furini's name, 
The loving as the liberal ! Enough : 
Only to ope a lily, though for sake 
Of setting free its scent, disturbs the rough 
Loose gold about its anther. I shall take 
No blame in one more blazon, last of all — 
Good painter were you : if in very deed 
I styled you great — what modern art dares call 
My word in question ? Let who will take heed 
Of what he seeks and misses in your brain 
To balance that precision of the brush 
Your hand could ply so deftly : all in vain 
Strives poet's power for outlet when the push 
Is lost upon a barred and bolted gate 
Of painter's impotency. Angelo — 
Thine were alike the head and hand, by fate 
Doubly endowed ! Who boasts head only — woe 
To hand's presumption should brush emulate 
Fancy's free passage by the pen, and show 



FRANCIS FURINI 

Thought wrecked and ruined where the inexpert 
Foolhardy fingers half grasjied, half let go 
Film-wings the poet's pen arrests unhurt ! 
No — painter such as that miraculous 
Michael, who deems you ? But the ample gift 
Of gracing walls else blank of this our house 
Of life with imagery, one bright drift 
Poured forth by pencil, — man and woman mere, 
Glorified till half owned for gods, — the dear 
Fleshly perfection of the human shape, — 
This was apportioned you whereby to praise 
Heaven and bless earth. Who clumsily essays, 
By slighting painter's craft, to prove the ape 
Of poet's pen-creation, just betrays 
Twofold ineptitude. 

II. 

By such sure ways 
Do I return, Furini, to ray first 
And central confidence — that he I proved 
Good priest, good man, good painter, and rehearsed 
Praise upon praise to show — not simply loved 
For virtue, but for wisdom honored too 
Needs must Furini be, — it follows — who 
Shall undertake to breed in me belief 
That, on his death-bed, weakness played the thief 
With wisdom, folly ousted reason quite ? 



90 PARLEYINGS WITH 

List to the chronicler ! With main and might — 

So fame runs — did the poor soul beg his friends 

To buy and burn his hand-work, make amends 

For having reproduced therein — (Ah, me ! 

Sighs fame — that 's friend Filippo) — nudity ! 

Yes, I assure you : he would paint — not men 

Merely — a pardonable fault — but when 

He had to deal with — Oh, not mother Eve 

Alone, permissibly in Paradise 

Naked and unashamed, — but dared achieve 

Dreadful distinction, at soul-safety's price. 

By also painting women — (why the need ?) 

Just as God made them : there, you have the truth ! 

Yes, rosed from top to toe in flush of youth, 

One foot upon the moss-fringe, would some Nymph 

Try, with its venturous fellow, if the lymph 

Were chillier than the slab-stepped fountain-edge ; 

The while a-heap her garments on its ledge 

Of boulder lay within hand's easy reach, 

— No one least kid-skin cast around her ! Speech 
Shrinks from enumerating case and case 

Of — were it but Diana at the chase, 
With tunic tucked discreetly hunting-high ! 
No, some Queen Venus set our necks awry. 
Turned faces from the painter's all-too-frank 
Triumph of flesh ! For — whom had he to thank 

— This self-appointed nature-student ? Whence 



FRANCIS FURINl 91 

Picked he up practice ? By what evidence 

Did he unhandsomely become adept 

In simulating bodies ? How except 

By actual sight of such ? Himself confessed 

The enormity : quoth Philip " When I pressed 

The painter to acknowledge his abuse 

Of artistry else potent — what excuse 

Made the infatuated man ? I give 

His very words : ' Did you but know, as I, 

— O scruple-splitting sickly-sensitive 

Mild-moral-monger, what the agony 

Of Art is ere Art satisfy herself 

In imitating Nature — (Man, poor elf, 

Striving to match the finger-mark of Him 

The immeasurably matchless) — gay or grim, 

Pray, would your smile be ? Leave mere fools to tax 

Art's high-strung brain's intentness as so lax 

That, in its mid-throe, idle fancy sees 

The moment for admittance ! ' Pleadings these — 

Specious, I grant." So adds, and seems to wince 

Somewhat, our censor — but shall truth convince 

Blockheads like Baldinucci ? 

III. 

I resume 
My incredulity : your other kind 
Of soul, Furini, never was so blind, 



PARLEYINGS WITH 

Even by death-mist, as to grope in gloom 

For cheer beside a bonfire piled to turn 

Ashes and dust all that your noble life 

Did homage to life's Lord by, — bid them burn 

— These Baldinucci blockheads — pictures rife 

With record, in each rendered loveliness, 

That one appreciative creature's debt 

Of thanks to the Creator, more or less. 

Was paid according as heart's-will had met 

Hand's-power in Art's endeavor to express 

Heaven's most consummate of achievements, bless 

Earth by a semblance of the seal God set 

On woman his supremest v^^ork. I trust 

Rather, Furini, dying breath had vent 

In some fine fervor of thanksgiving just 

For this — that soul and body's power you spent — 

Agonized to adumbrate, trace in dust 

That marvel which we dream the firmament 

Copies in star-device when fancies stray 

Outlining, orb by orb, Andromeda — 

God's best of beauteous and magnificent 

Revealed to earth — the naked female form. 

Nay, I mistake not : wrath that 's but lukewarm 

Would boil indeed were such a critic styled 

Himself an artist : artist ! Ossa piled 

Topping Olympus — the absurd which crowns 

The extravagant — whereat one laughs, not frowns. 



FRANCIS FUR INI 93 

Paints he ? One bids the poor pretender take 
His sorry self, a trouble and disgrace, 
From out the sacred presence, void the place 
Artists claim only. What — not merely wake 
Our pity that suppressed concupiscence — 
A satyr masked as matron — makes pretence 
To the coarse blue-fly's instinct — can perceive 
No better reason why she should exist — ■ 

— God's lily-limbed and blush-rose-bosomed Eve — 
Than as a hot-bed for the sensualist 

To fly-blow with his fancies, make pure stuff 

Breed him back filth — this were not crime enough ? 

But further — fly to style itself — nay, more — 

To steal among the sacred ones, crouch down 

Though but to where their garments sweep the floor — 

— Still catching some faint sparkle from the crown 
Crowning transcendent Michael, Leonard, 
Rafael, — to sit beside the feet of such, 
Unspurned because unnoticed, then reward 

Their toleration — mercy overmuch — 

By stealing from the throne-step to the fools 

Curious outside the gateway, all-agape 

To learn by what procedure, in the schools 

Of Art, a merest man in outward shape 

INIay learn to be Correggio ! Old and young. 

These learners got their lesson : Art was just 

A safety-screen — (Art, which Correggio's tongue 



PARLEYINGS WITH 

Calls " Virtue ") — for a skulking vice : mere lust 

Inspired the artist when his Night and Morn 

Slept and awoke in marble on that edge 

Of heaven above our awe-struck earth : lust-born 

His Eve low bending took the privilege 

Of life from what our eyes saw — God's own palm 

That put the flame forth — to the love and thanks 

Of all creation save this recreant ! 

rv. 

Calm 
Our phrase, Furini ! Not the artist-ranks 
Claim riddance of an interloper : no — 
This Baldinucci did but grunt and sniff 
Outside Art's pale — ay, grubbed, where pine-trees grow, 
For pignuts only. 



You the Sacred ! If 
Indeed on you has been bestowed the dower 
Of Art in fulness, graced with head and hand, 
Head — to look up not downwards, hand — of power 
To make head's gain the portion of a world 
Where else the uninstructed ones too sure 
Would take all outside beauty — film that 's furled 
About a star — for the star's self, endure 
No guidance to the central glory, — nay, 



FRANCIS FURINI 95 

(Sadder) might a^Dprehend the film was fog, 

Or (worst) wish all but vapor well away, 

And sky's pure product thickened from earth's bog — 

Since so, nor seldom, have your worthiest failed 

To trust their own soul's insight — why ? except 

For warning that the head of the adept 

May too much prize the hand, work unassailed 

By scruple of the better sense that finds 

An orb within each halo, bids gross flesh 

Free the fine spirit-pattern, nor enmesh 

More than is meet a marvel, custom blinds 

Only the vulgar eye to. Little fear 

That you, the foremost of Art's fellowship 

Will oft — will ever so offend ! But — hip 

And thigh — smite the Philistine ! You — slunk here — 

Connived at, by too easy tolerance. 

Not to scrape palette simply or squeeze brush, 

But dub your very self an Artist ? Tush — 

You, of the daubings, is it, dare advance 

This doctrine that the Artist-mind must needs 

Own to affinity with yours — confess 

Provocative acquaintance, more or less, 

With each impurely-peevish worm that breeds 

Inside your brain's receptacle ? 



PARLEYINGS WITH 



VI. 



Enough. 
Who owns " I dare not look on diadems 
Without an itch to pick out, purloin gems 
Others contentedly leave sparkling " — gruff 
Answers the guard of the regalia : " Why — 
Consciously kleptomaniac — thrust yourself 
Where your illicit craving after pelf 
Is tempted most — in the King's treasury ? 
Go elsewhere ! Sort with thieves, if thus you feel — 
When folks clean-handed simply recognize 
Treasure whereof the mere sight satisfies — 
But straight your fingers are on itch to steal ! 
Hence with you ! " 

Pray, Furini ! 

VII. 

" Bounteous God, 
Deviser and dispenser of all gifts 
To soul through sense, — in Art the soul uplifts 
Man's best of thanks ! What but Thy measuring-rod 
Meted forth heaven and earth ? more intimate. 
Thy very hands were busied with the task 
Of making, in this human shape, a mask — 
A match for that divine. Shall love abate 
Man's wonder ? Nowise ! True — true — all too true 



FRANCIS FURINI 97 

No gift but, in the very plenitude 

Of its perfection, goes maimed, misconstrued 

By wickedness or weakness : still, some few 

Have grace to see Thy purpose, strength to mar 

Thy work by no admixture of their own, 

— Limn truth not falsehood, bid us love alone 

The type untampered with, the naked star ! " 

VIII. 

And, prayer done, painter — what if you should preach ? 

Not as of old when playing pulpiteer 

To simple-witted country folk, but here 

In actual London try your powers of speech 

On us the cultured, therefore sceptical — 

What would you ? For, suppose he has his word 

In faith's behalf, no matter how absurd. 

This painter-theologian ? One and all 

We lend an ear — nay. Science takes thereto — 

Encourages the meanest who has racked 

Nature until he gains from her some fact. 

To state what truth is from his point of view, 

Mere pin-point though it be : since many such 

Conduce to make a whole, she bids our friend 

Come forward unabashed and haply lend 

His little life-experience to our much 

Of modern knowledge. Since she so insists, 

Up stands Furini. 



98 PARLE YIN GS WITH 

IX. 

" Evolutionists ! 
At truth I glimpse from depths, you glance from heights, 
Our stations for discovery opposites, — 
How should ensue agreement ? I explain : 
'T is the tip-top of things to which you strain 
Your vision, until atoms, protojjlasm, 
And what and whence and how may be the spasm 
Which sets all going, stop you : down perforce 
Needs must your observation take its course, 
Since there 's no moving upwards : link by link 
You drop to where the atoms somehow think. 
Feel, know themselves to be : the world 's begun, 
Such as we recognize it. Have you done 
Descending ? Here 's ourself, — Man, known to-day, 
Duly evolved at last, — so far, you say. 
The sum and seal of being's progress. Good ! 
Thus much at least is clearly understood — 
Of power does Man possess no particle : 
Of knowledge — just so much as shows that still 
It ends in ignorance on every side : 
But righteousness — ah, Man is deified 
Thereby, for compensation ! Make survey 
Of Man's surroundings, try creation — nay. 
Try emulation of the minimized 
Minuteness fancy may conceive ! Surprised 



FHANCIS FURINl 99 

Reason becomes by two defeats for one — 

Not only power at each phenomenon 

Baffled, but knowledge also in default — 

Askmg what is minuteness — yonder vault 

Speckled with suns, or this the millionth — thing, 

How shall I call ? — that on some insect's wing 

Helps to make out in dyes the mimic star ? 

Weak, ignorant, accordingly we are : 

What then ? The worse for Nature I Where began 

Righteousness, moral sense except in Man ? 

True, he makes nothing, understands no whit : 

Had the initiator-spasm seen fit 

Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse 

And much the better were the universe. 

What does Man see or feel or apprehend 

Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend, 

Omissions to supply, — one wide disease 

Of things that are, which Man at once would ease 

Had will but power and knowledge ? failing both — 

Things must take will for deed — Man, nowise loth, 

Accepts pre-eminency : mere blind force — 

Mere knowledge undirected in its cour&e 

By any care for what is made or marred 

In cither's operation — these award 

The crown to ? Rather let it deck thy brows, 

Man, whom alone a righteousness endows 

Would cure the wide world's ailing ! Who disputes 



100 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Thy claim thereto ? Had Spasm more attributes 

Than power and knowledge in its gift, before 

Man came to pass ? The higher that we soar, 

The less of moral sense like Man's we find : 

No sign of such before, — what comes behind. 

Who guesses ? But until there crown our sight 

The quite new — not the old mere infinite 

Of changings, — some fresh kind of sun and moon, — 

Then, not before, shall I expect a boon 

Of intuition just as strange, which turns 

Evil to good, and wrong to right, unlearns 

All Man's experience learned since Man was he. 

Accept in Man, advanced to this degree. 

The Prime Mind, therefore ! neither wise nor strong — 

Whose fault ? but were he both, then right, not wrong 

As now, throughout the world were paramount 

According to his will, — which I account 

The qualifying faculty. He stands 

Confessed supreme — the monarch whose commands 

Could he enforce, how bettered were the world ! 

He 's at the height this moment — to be hurled 

Next moment to the bottom by rebound 

Of his own peal of laughter. All around 

Ignorance wraps him, — whence and how and why 

Things are, — yet cloud breaks and lets blink the sky 

Just overhead, not elsewhere ! What assures 

His optics that the very blue which lures 



FRANCIS FURINl 101 

Comes not of black outside it, doubly dense ? 

Ignorance overwraps his moral sense, 

Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps, 

So much and no more than lets through perhaps 

The murmured knowledge — * Ignorance exists.* 



" I at the bottom, Evolutionists, 
Advise beginning, rather. I profess 
To know just one fact — my self -consciousness, — 
'Twixt ignorance and ignorance enisled, — 
Knowledge : before me was my Cause — that 's styled 
God : after, in due course succeeds the rest, — 
All that my knowledge comprehends — at best — 
At worst, conceives about in mild despair. 
Light needs must touch on either darkness : where ? 
Knowledge so far impinges on the Cause 
Before me, that I know — by certain laws 
Wholly unknown, whate'er I apprehend 
Within, without me, had its rise : thus blend 
I, and all things perceived, in one Effect. 
How far can knowledge any ray project 
On what comes after me — the universe ? 
Well, my attempt to make the cloud disperse 
Begins — not from above but underneath : 
I climb, you soar, — who soars soon loses breath 
And sinks, who climbs keeps one foot firm on fact 



102 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Ere hazarding the next step : soul's first act 

(Call consciousness the soul — some name we need) 

Getting itself aware, through stuff decreed 

Thereto (so call the hody) — who has stept 

So far, there let him stand, become adept 

In hody ere he shift his station thence 

One single hair's breadth. Do I make pretence 

To teach, myself unskilled in learning ? Lo, 

My life's work ! Let my pictures prove I know 

Somewhat of what this fleshly frame of ours 

Or is or should be, how the soul empowers 

The body to reveal its every mood 

Of love and hate, pour forth its plenitude 

Of passion. If my hand attained to give 

Thus permanence to truth else fugitive, 

Did not I also fix each fleeting grace 

Of form and feature — save the beauteous face — 

Arrest decay in transitory might 

Of bone and muscle — cause the world to bless 

Forever each transcendent nakedness 

Of man and woman ? Were such feats achieved 

By sloth, or strenuous labor unrelieved, 

— Yet lavished vainly ? Ask that underground 

(So may I speak) of all on surface found 

Of flesh-perfection ! Dej)ths on depths to probe 

Of ail-inventive artifice, disrobe 

Marvel at hiding under marvel, pluck 



FRANCIS FURINl 103 

Veil after veil from Nature — were the luck 

Ours to surprise the secret men so name, 

That still eludes the searcher — all the same, 

Repays his search with still fresh proof — * P^xterne, 

Not inmost, is the Cause, fool ! Look and learn ! ' 

Thus teach my hundred pictures : firm and fast 

There did I plant my first foot. And the next ? 

Nowhere ! 'T was put forth and withdrawn, perplexed 

At touch of what seemed stable and proved stuff 

Such as the colored clouds are : plain enough 

There lay the outside universe : try Man — 

My most immediate ! and the dip began 

From safe and solid into that profound 

Of ignorance I tell you surges round 

My rock-spit of self-knowledge. Well and ill, 

Evil and good irreconcilable 

Above, beneath, about my every side, — 

How did this wild confusion far and wide 

Tally with my experience when my stamp — 

So far from stirring — struck out, each a lamp, 

Spark after spark of truth from where I stood — 

Pedestalled triumph ? Evil there was good, 

"Want was the promise of supply, defect 

Ensured completion, — where and when and how ? 

Leave that to the first Cause ! Enough that now, 

Here where I stand, this moment 's me and mine, 

Shows me what is, permits me to divine 



104 PARLEYINGS WITH 

What shall be. Wherefore ? Nay, how otherwise ? 

Look at my pictures ! What so glorifies 

The body that the permeating soul 

Finds there no particle elude control 

Direct, or fail of duty, — most obscure 

When most subservient ? Did that Cause ensure 

The soul such raptures as its fancy stings 

Body to furnish when, uplift by wings 

Of passion, here and now, it leaves the earth, 

Loses itself above, where bliss has birth — 

(Heaven, be the phrase) — did that same Cause contrive 

Such solace for the body, soul must dive 

At drop of fancy's pinion, condescend 

To bury both alike on earth, our friend 

And fellow, where minutely exquisite 

Low lie the pleasures, now and here — no herb 

But hides its marvel, peace no doubts perturb 

In each small mystery of insect life — 

— Shall the soul's Cause thus gift the soul, yet strife 

Continue still of fears with hopes, — for why ? 

What if the Cause, whereof we now descry 

So far the wonder-working, lack at last 

Will, power, benevolence — a protojjlast, 

No consummator, sealing up the sum 

Of all things, — past and present and to come 

Perfection ? No, I have no doubt at all ! 

There 's my amount of knowledge — gi^eat or small, 



FRANCIS FURINl 105 

Sufficient for my needs : for see ! advance 

Its liglit now on that depth of ignorance 

I shrank before from — yonder where the world 

Lies wreck-strewn, — evil towering, prone good — hurled 

From pride of place, on every side. For me 

(Patience, beseech you !) knowledge can but be 

Of good by knowledge of good's opposite — 

Evil, — since, to distinguish wrong from right. 

Both must be known in each extreme, beside — 

(Or what means knowledge — to aspire or bide 

Content with half-attaining ? Hardly so !) 

Made to know on, know ever, I must know 

All to be known at any halting-stage 

Of my soul's progi^ess, such as earth, where wage 

War, just for soul's instruction, pain with joy. 

Folly with wisdom, all that works annoy 

With all that quiets and contents, — in brief, 

Good strives with evil. 

Now then for relief, 
Friends, of your patience kindly curbed so long. 
' What ? ' snarl you ; ' is the fool's conceit thus strong — 
Must the whole outside world in soul and sense 
Suffer, that he grow sage at its expense ? ' 
By no means ! 'T is by merest touch of toe 
I try — not trench on — ignorance, just know — 
And so keep steady footing : how you fare. 
Caught in the whirlpool — that 's the Cause's care. 



106 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Strong, wise, good, — this I know at any rate 

In my own self, — but how may operate 

With you — strength, wisdom, goodness — no least hlinl 

Of knowledge breaks the darkness round me. Think ! 

Could I see plain, be somehow certified 

All was illusion, — evil far and wide 

Was good disguised, — why, out with one huge wipe 

Goes knowledge from me. Type needs antitype : 

As night needs day, as shine needs shade, £0 good 

Needs evil : how were pity understood 

Unless by pain ? Make evident that pain 

Permissibly masks pleasure — you abstain 

From outstretch of the finger-tip that saves 

A drowning fly. Who proffers help of hand 

To weak Andromeda exposed on strand 

At mercy of the monster ? Were all true, 

Help were not wanting : ' But 't is false,' cry you, 

' Mere fancy-work of paint and brush ! ' No less, 

Were mine the skill, the magic, to impress 

Beholders with a confidence they saw 

Life, — veritable flesh and blood in awe 

Of just as true a sea-beast, — would they stare 

Simply as now, or cry out, curse and swear, 

Or call the gods to help, or catch up stick 

And stone, according as their hearts were quick 

Or sluggish ? Well, some old artificer 

Could do as much, — at least, so books aver, — 



FRANCIS FURINI 107 

Able to make-believe, while I, poor wight, 

Make-fancy, nothing more. Though wrong were right, 

Could we but know — still wrong must needs seem wrong 

To do right's service, prove men weak or strong. 

Choosers of evil -or of good. 'No such 

Illusion possible ! ' Ah, friends, you touch 

Just here my solid standing-place amid 

The wash and welter, whence all doubts are bid 

Back to the ledge they break against in foam, 

Futility : my soul, and my soul's home 

This body, — how each operates on each, 

And how things outside, fact or feigning, teach 

What good is and what evil, — just the same, 

Be feigning or be fact the teacher, — blame 

Diffidence nowise if, from this I judge 

My point of vantage, not an inch I budge. 

All — for myself — seems ordered wise and well 

Inside it, — what reigns outside, who can tell ? 

Contrariwise, who needs be told ' The space 

Which yields thee knowledge, — do its bounds embrace 

Well-willing and wise- working, each at height ? 

Enough : beyond thee lies the infinite — 

Back to thy circumscription I ' 

Back indeed ! 
Ending where I began — thus : retrocede. 
Who will, — what comes first, take first, I advise ! 
Acquaint you with the body ere your eyes 



108 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Look upward : this Andromeda of mine — 

Gaze on the beauty, Art hangs out for sign 

There 's finer entertainment underneath. 

Learn how they ministrate to life and death — 

Those incommensurably marvellous 

Contrivances which furnish forth the house 

Where soul has sway ! Though Master keep aloof, 

Signs of His presence multiply from roof 

To basement of the building. Look around, 

Learn thoroughly, — no fear that you confound 

Master with messuage ! He 's away, no doubt. 

But what if, all at once, you come ui)on 

A startling proof — not that the Master gone 

Was present lately — but that something — whence 

Light comes — has pushed Him into residence ? 

Was such the symbol's meaning, — old, uncouth — 

That circle of the serpent, tail in mouth ? 

Only by looking low, ere looking high, 

Comes penetration of the mystery." 

XI. 

Thanks ! After sermonizing, psalmody ! 

Now praise with pencil, Painter ! Fools attaint 

Your fame, forsooth, because its power inclines 

To livelier colors, more attractive lines 

Than suit some orthodox sad sickly saint 

— Gray male emaciation, haply streaked 



FRANCIS FUR IN I 109 

Carmine by scourgings — or they want, far worse — 

Some self-scathed woman, framed to bless not curse 

Nature that loved the form whereon hate wreaked 

The wrongs you see. No, rather paint some full 

Benignancy, the first and foremost boon 

Of youth, health, strength, — show beauty's May, ere June 

Undo the bud's blush, leave a rose to cull 

— No poppy, neither ! yet less perfect-pure, 

Divinely-precious with life's dew besprent. 

Show saintliness that 's simply innocent 

Of guessing sinnership exists to cure 

All in good time ! In time let age advance 

And teach that knowledge helps — not ignorance — 

The healing of the nations. Let my spark 

Quicken your tinder ! Burn with — Joan of Arc ! 

Not at the end, nor midway when there grew 

The brave delusions, when rare fancies flew 

Before the eyes, and in the ears of her 

Strange voices woke imperiously astir : 

No, — paint the peasant girl all peasant-like, 

Spirit and flesh — the hour about to strike 

When this should be transfigured, that inflamed, 

By heart's admonishing " Thy country shamed. 

Thy king shut out of all his realm except 

One sorry corner ! " and to life forth leapt 

The indubitable lightning " Can there be 

Country and king's salvation — all through me ? " 



110 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Memorize that burst's moment, Francis ! Tush — 

None of the nonsense-writing ! Fitlier brush 

Shall clear off fancy's film-work and let show 

Not what the foolish feign but the wise know — 

Ask Sainte-Beuve else ! — or better, Quicherat, 

The downright-digger into truth that 's — Bah, 

Bettered by fiction ? Well, of fact thus much 

Concerns you, that " of prudishness no touch 

From first to last defaced the maid ; anon, 

Camp-use compelling " — what says D'Alengon 

Her fast friend ? — " though I saw while she undressed 

How fair she was — especially her breast — 

Never had I a wild thought ! " — as indeed 

I nowise doubt. Much less would she take heed — 

When eve came, and the lake, the hills around 

Were all one solitude and silence, — found 

Barriered impenetrably safe about, — 

Take heed of interloping eyes shut out, 

But quietly permit the air imbibe 

Her naked beauty till . . . but hear the scribe ! 

Now as she fain would bathe, one even-tide, 

God's maid, this Joan, from the pooVs edge she spied 

The fair hhie bird clowns call the Fisher-king : 

And " 'Las, sighed she, my Liege is such a thing 

As thou, lord but of one p)oor lonely place 

Out of his whole wide France : were mine the grace 

To set my Dauphin free as thou, blue, bird ! " 



FRANCIS FUR INI 111 

Properly Martin-fisher — that 's the word, 

Not yours nor mine : folks said the rustic oath 

In common use with her was — " By my troth ? " 

No, — " By my Martin " ! Paint this ! Only, turn 

Her face away — that face about to burn 

Into an angel's when the time is ripe ! 

That task 's beyond you. Finished, Francis ? Wipe 

Pencil, scrape palette, and retire content ! 

*' Omnia non omnibus " — no harm is meant ! 



VI 
WITH GERARD DE LAIRESSE 



WITH GERARD DE LAIRESSE 
I. 

Ah, but — because you were struck blind, could bless 

Your sense no longer with the actual view 

Of man and woman, those fair forms you drew 

In happier days so duteously and true, — 

Must I account my Gerard de Lairesse 

All sorrow-smitten ? He was hindered too 

— Was this no hardship ? — from producing, plain 

To us who still have eyes, the pageantry 

Which passed and jDassed before his busy brain 

And, captured on his canvas, showed our sky 

Traversed by flying shapes, earth stocked with brood 

Of monsters, — centaurs bestial, satyrs lewd, — 

Not without much Olympian glory, shapes 

Of god and goddess in their gay escapes 

From the severe serene : or haply paced 

The antique ways, god-counselled, nymph-embraced, 

Some early human kingly personage. 

Such wonders of the teeming poet's-age 

Were still to be : nay, these indeed began — 



116 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Are not the pictures extant ? — till the ban 

Of blindness struck both palette from his thumb 

And pencil from his finger. 

II. 

Blind — not dumb, 
Else, Gerard, were my inmost bowels stirred 
With pity beyond pity : no, the word 
Was left upon your unmolested lips : 
Your mouth unsealed, despite of eyes' eclipse 
Talked all brain's yearning into birth. I lack 
Somehow the heart to wish your practice back 
Which boasted hand's achievement in a score 
Of veritable pictures, less or more, 
Still to be seen : myself have seen them, — moved 
To pay due homage to the man I loved 
Because of that prodigious book he wrote 
On Artistry's Ideal, by taking note, 
Making acquaintance with his artist-work. 
So my youth's piety obtained success 
Of ail-too dubious sort : for, though it irk 
To tell the issue, few or none would guess 
From extant lines and colors, De Lairesse, 
Your faculty, although each deftly-grouped 
And aptly-ordered figure-piece was judged 
Worthy a prince's purchase in its day. 
Bearded experience bears not to be duped 



GERARD DE LAIRESSE 117 

Like boyish fancy : 't was a boy that budged 

No foot's breadth from your visioned steps away 

The while that memorable " Walk" he trudged 

In your companionship, — the Book must say 

Where, when and whither, — *' Walk," come what come may, 

No measurer of steps on this our globe 

Shall ever match for marvels. Faustus' robe, 

And Fortunatus' cap were gifts of price : 

But — oh, your piece of sober sound advice 

That artists should descry abundant worth 

In trivial commonplace, nor groan at dearth 

If fortune bade the painter's craft be plied 

In vulgar town and country ! Why despond 

Because hemmed round by Dutch canals ? Beyond 

The ugly actual, lo, on every side 

Imagination's limitless domain 

Displayed a wealth of wondrous sounds and sights 

Ripe to be realized by jDoet's brain 

Acting on painter's brush ! " Ye doubt ? Poor wights, 

What if I set example, go before, 

While you come after, and we both explore 

Holland turned Dreamland, taking care to note 

Objects whereto my pupils may devote 

A-ttention with advantage ? " 



118 PARLE YINGS WITH 

in. 

So commenced 
That " Walk '* amid true wonders — none to you, 
But huge to us ignobly common-sensed, 
Purblind, while plain could proper optics view 
In that old sepulchi-e by lightning split. 
Whereof the lid bore carven, — any dolt 
Imagines why, — Jove's very thunderbolt : 
You who could straight perceive, by glance at it, 
This tomb must needs be Phaeton's ! In a trice, 
Confirming that conjecture, close on hand. 
Behold, half out, half in the ploughed-up sand, 
A chariot-wheel explained its bolt-device : 
What other than the Chariot of the Sun 
Ever let drop the like ? Consult the tome * — 
I bid inglorious tarriers-at-home — 
For greater still surprise the while that " Walk " 
Went on and on, to end as it begun, 
ChokefuU of chances, changes, every one 
No whit less wondrous. What was there to balk 
Us, who had eyes, from seeing ? You with none 
Missed not a marvel : wherefore ? Let us talk. 

* The Art of Painting, etc. , by Gerard de Lairesse ; translated by J. F. 
Fritseh. 1778. 



GERARD DE LAIRESSE 119 

IV. 

Say am I right ? Your sealed sense moved your mind, 

Free from obstruction, to compassionate 

Art's power left powerless, and supply the blind 

With fancies worth all facts denied by fate. 

Mind could invent things, add to — take away, 

At pleasure, leave out trifles mean and base 

Which vex the sight that cannot say them nay 

But, where mind plays the master, have no place. 

And bent on banishing was mind, be sure. 

All except beauty from its mustered tribe 

Of objects apparitional which lure 

Painter to show and poet to describe — 

That imagery of the antique song 

Truer than truth's self. Fancy's rainbow-birth 

Conceived mid clouds in Greece, could glance along 

Your passage o'er Dutch veritable earth, 

As with ourselves, who see, familiar throng 

About our pacings men and women worth 

Nowise a glance — so poets apprehend — 

Since nought avails portraying them in verse : 

While painters turn upon the heel, intend 

To spare their work the critic's ready curse 

Due to the daily and undignified. 



120 PARLEYINGS WITH 

V. 

I who myself contentedly abide 

Awake, nor want the wings of dream, — who tramp 

Earth's common surface, rough, smooth, dry or damp, 

— I understand alternatives, no less 

Conceive your soul's leap, Gerard de Lairesse ! 

How were it could I mingle false with true, 

Boast, with the sights I see, your vision too ? 

Advantage would it prove or detriment 

If I saw double ? Could I gaze intent 

On Dryope plucking the blossoms red. 

As you, whereat her lote-tree writhed and bled, 

Yet lose no gain, no hard fast wide-awake 

Having and holding nature for the sake 

Of nature only — nymph and lote-tree thus 

Gained by the loss of fruit not fabulous, 

Apple of English homesteads, where I see 

Nor seek more than crisp buds a struggling bee 

Uncrumples, caught by sweet he clambers through ? 

Truly, a moot point : make it plain to me, 

Who, bee-like, sate sense with the simply true, 

Nor seek to heighten that sufficiency 

By help of feignings j^roper to the page — 

Earth's surface-blank whereon the elder age 

Put color, poetizing — poured rich life 

On what were else a dead ground — nothingness — 



GERARD DE LAIRESSE 121 

Until the solitary world grew rife 

With Joves and Junos, nymphs and satyrs. Yes, 

The reason was, fancy composed the strife 

'Twixt sense and soul : for sense, my De Lairesse, 

Cannot content itself with outward things, 

Mere beauty : soul must needs know whence there springs — 

How, when and why — what sense but loves, nor lists 

To know at all. 

VI. 

Not one of man's acquists 
Ought he resignedly to lose, methinks : 
So, \ -xnt me out which was it of the links 
Snapt first, from out the chain which used to bind 
Our earth to heaven, and yet for you, since blind, 
Subsisted still efficient and intact ? 
Oh, we can fancy too ! but somehow fact 
Has got to — say, not so much push aside 
Fancy, as to declare its place supplied 
By fact unseen but no less fact the same. 
Which mind bids sense accept. Is mind to blame, 
Or sense, — does that usurp, this abdicate ? 
First of all, as you " walked " — were it too late 
For us to walk, if so we willed ? Confess 
We have the sober feet still, De Lairesse ! 
Why not the freakish brain too, that must needs 
Supplement nature — not see flowers and weeds 



122 PARLEYING S WITH 

Simply as such, but link with each and all 
The ultimate perfection — what we call 
Rightly enough the human shape divine ? 
The rose ? No rose unless it disentwine 
From Venus' wreath the while she bends to kiss 
Her deathly love ? Plain retrogression, this ! 

VII. 

No, no : we poets go not back at all : 

What you did we could do — from great to small 

Sinking assuredly : if this world last 

One moment longer when Man finds its Past 

Exceed its Present — blame the Protoj^last ! 

If we no longer see as you of old, 

'T is we see deeper. Progress for the bold ! 

You saw the body, 't is the soul we see. 

Try now ! Bear witness while you walk with me, 

I see as you : if we loose arms, stop pace, 

'T is that you stand still, I conclude the race 

Without your company. Come, walk once more 

The " Walk " : if I to-day as you of yore 

See just like you the blind — then sight shall cry 

— The whole long day quite gone through — victory ! 

vin. 

Thunders on thunders, doubling and redoubling 
Doom o'er the mountain, while a sharp white fire 



GERARD DE LAIRESSE 123 

Now shone, now sheared Its rusty herbage, troubling 

Hardly the fir-boles, now discharged its ire 

Full where some pine-tree's solitary spire 

Crashed down, defiant to the last : till — lo, 

The motive of the malice ! — all aglow, 

Circled with flame there yawned a sudden rift 

I' the rock-face, and I saw a form erect 

Front and defy the outrage, while — as checked. 

Chidden, beside him dauntless in the drift — 

Cowered a heaped creature, wing and wing outspread 

In deprecation o'er the crouching head 

Still hungry for the feast foregone awhile. 

O thou, of scorn's unconquerable smile. 

Was it when this — Jove's feathered fury — slipped 

Gore-glutted from the heart's core whence he ripped — 

This eagle-hound — neither reproach nor prayer — 

Baffled, in one more fierce attempt to tear 

Fate's secret from thy safeguard, — was it then 

That all these thunders rent earth, ruined air 

To reach thee, pay thy patronage of men ? 

He thundered, — to withdraw, as beast to lair, 

Before the triumph on thy pallid brow. 

Gather the night again about thee now, 

Hate on, love ever I Morn is breaking there — 

The granite ridge pricks through the mist, turns gold 

As wrong turns right. O laughters manifold 

Of ocean's ripple at dull earth's despair! 



PARLEYING S WITH 



IX. 



But morning's laugh sets all the crags alight 

Above the baffled tempest : tree and tree 

Stir themselves from the stupor of the night, 

And every strangled branch resumes its right 

To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free 

In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge, 

While earth, distent with moisture like a spunge. 

Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see. 

Each grass-blade's glory- glitter. Had I known 

The torrent now turned river ? — masterful 

Making its rush o'er tumbled ravage — stone 

And stub which barred the froths and loams : no bull' 

Ever broke bounds in formidable sport 

More overwhelmingly, till lo, the spasm 

Sets him to dare that last mad leap : report 

Who may — his fortunes in the deathly chasm 

That swallows him in silence ! Rather turn 

Whither, upon the upland, pedestalled 

Into the broad day-splendor, whom discern 

These eyes but thee, supreme one, rightly called 

Moon-maid in heaven above and, here below, 

Earth's huntress-queen ? I note the garb succinct 

Saving from smirch that purity of snow 

From breast to knee — snow's self with just the tinct 

Of the apple-blossom's heart-blush. Ab, the ])ow 



GERARD DE LAIRESSE 12-3 

Slack-strung her fingers grasp, where, ivory-linked 

Horn curving blends with horn, a moonlike pair 

Which mimic the brow's crescent sparkling so — 

As if a star's live restless fragment winked 

Proud yet repugnant, captive in such hair I 

What hope along the hillside, what far bliss 

Lets the crisp hair-plaits fall so low they kiss 

Those lucid shoulders ? Must a morn so blithe 

Needs have its sorrow when the twang and hiss 

Tell that from out thy sheaf one shaft makes writhe 

Its victim, thou unerring Artemis ? 

Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark 

Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed 

Was bred of liquid marble in the dark 

Deptlis of the mountain's womb that ever teemed 

With novel births of wonder ? Not one spark 

Of pity in that steel-gray glance which gleamed 

At the poor hoof's protesting as it stamj^ed 

Idly the granite ? Let me glide unseen 

From thy proud presence : well may'st thou be queen 

Of all those strange and sudden deaths which damped 

So oft Love's torch and Hymen's taper lit 

For happy marriage till the maidens paled 

And perished on the temple-step, assailed 

By — what except to envy must man's wit 

Impute that sure implacable release 

Of life from warmth and joy ? But death means peace. 



126 • PARLEY IN GS WITH 



Noon is the conqueror, — not a spray, nor leaf, 

Nor herb, nor blossom but has rendered up 

Its mornmg dew : the valley seemed one cup 

Of cloud-smoke, but the vapor's reign was brief. 

Sun-smitten, see, it hangs — the filmy haze — 

Gray-garmenting the herbless mountain-side, 

To soothe the day's sharp glare : while far and wide 

Above unclouded burns the sky, one blaze 

With fierce immitigable blue, no bird 

Ventures to spot by passage. E'en of peaks 

Which still presume there, plain each pale point speaks 

In wan transparency of waste incurred 

By over-daring : far from me be such I 

Deep in the hollow, rather, where combine 

Tree, shrub and briar to roof with shade and cool 

The remnant of some lily-strangled pool, 

Edged round with mossy fringing soft and fine. 

Smooth lie the bottom slabs, and overhead 

Watch elder, bramble, rose, and service-tree 

And one beneficent rich barberry 

Jewelled all over with fruit-pendants red. 

What have I seen ! O Satyr, well I know 

How sad thy case, and what a world of woe 

Was hid by the brown visage furry-framed 

Only for mirth : who otherwise could think — 



GERARD DE LAIRESSE 127 

Marking thy mouth gape still on laughter's brink, 
Thine eyes a-swim with merriment unnamed 
But haply guessed at by their furtive wink ? 
And all the while a heart was panting sick 
Behind that shaggy bulwark of thy breast — 
Passion it was that made those breath-bursts thick 
I took for mirth subsiding into rest. 
So, it was Lyda — she of all the train 
Of f orest-thridding nymphs, — ' 't was only she 
Turned from thy rustic homage in disdain, 
Saw but that poor uncouth outside of thee, 
^And, from her circling sisters, mocked a pain 
Echo had pitied — whom Pan loved in vain — 
For she was wishful to partake thy glee, 
Mimic thy mirth — who loved her not again, 
Savage for Lyda's sake. She crouches there — 
Thy cruel beauty, slumberously laid 
Supine on heaped-up beast-skins, unaware 
Thy steps have traced her to the briery glade, 
Thy greedy hands disclose the cradling lair. 
Thy hot eyes reach and revel on the maid ! 

XI. 

Now, what should this be for ? The sun's decline 
Seems as he hngered lest he lose some act 
Dread and decisive, some prodigious fact 
Like thunder from the safe sky's sajiphirine 



128 PARLEYINGS WITH 

About to alter earth's conditions, packed 

With fate for nature's self that waits, aware 

What mischief unsuspected in the air 

Menaces momently a cataract. 

Therefore it is that yonder space extends 

Untrenched upon by any vagrant tree, 

Shrub, weed well-nigh ; they keep their bounds, leave free 

The platform for what actors ? Foes or friends, 

Here come they trooping silent : heaven suspends 

Purpose the while they range themselves, I see ! 

Bent on a battle, two vast powers agree 

This present and no after-contest ends 

One or the other's grasp at rule in reach 

Over the race of man — host fronting host, 

As statue statue fronts — wrath-molten each, 

Solidified by hate, — earth halved almost, 

To close once more in chaos. Yet two shapes 

Show prominent, each from the universe 

Of minions round about him, that disperse 

Like cloud-obstruction when a bolt escapes. 

Who flames first ? Macedonian is it thou ? 

Ay, and who fronts thee, King Darius, drapes 

His form with purple, fillet-folds his brow. 

XII. 

What, then the long day dies at last ? Abrupt 
The sun that seemed, in stooping, sure to melt 



GERARD DE LAIRESSE 129 

Our mountain-ridge, is mastered : black the belt 

Of westward crags, his gold could not corrupt, 

Barriers again the valley, lets the flow 

Of lavish glory waste itself away 

— Whither ? For new climes, fresh eyes breaks the day ! 

Night was not to be baffled. If the glow 

Were all that 's gone from us ! Did clouds, afloat 

So filmily but now, discard no rose, 

Sombre throughout the fleeciness that grows 

A sullen uniformity. I note 

Rather displeasure, — in the overspread 

Change from the swim of gold to one pale lead 

Oppressive to malevolence, — than late 

Those amorous yearnings when the aggregate 

Of cloudlets pressed that each and all might sate 

Its passion and partake in rehcs red 

Of day's bequeathment : now, a frown instead 

Estranges, and affrights who needs must fare 

On and on tiU his journey ends : but where ? 

Caucasus ? Lost now in the night. Away 

And far enough lies that Arcadia. 

The human heroes tread the world's dark way 

No longer. Yet I dimly see almost — 

Yes, for my last adventure ! 'T is a ghost. 

So drops away the beauty ! There he stands 

Voiceless, scarce strives with deprecating hands. . . . 



PARLE YINGS WITH 



XIII. 



Enough ! Stop further fooling, De Lairesse ! 

My fault, not yours ! Some fitter way express 

Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed 

Is past, gives way before Life's best and last, 

The all-including Future ! What were life 

Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife 

Through the ambiguous Present to the goal 

Of some all-reconciling Future ? Soul, 

Nothing has been which shall not bettered be 

Hereafter, — leave the root, by law's decree 

Whence springs the ultimate and perfect tree ! 

Busy thee with unearthing root ? Nay, climb — 

Quit trunk, branch, leaf and flower — reach, rest sublime 

Where fruitage ripens in the blaze of day ! 

O'erlook, despise, forget, throw flower away, 

Intent on progress ? No whit more than stop 

Ascent therewith to dally, screen the top 

Sufficiency of yield by interposed 

Twistwork bold foot gets free from. Wherefore glozed 

The poets — *' Dream afresh old godlike shapes, 

Recapture ancient fable that escapes. 

Push back reality, repeople earth 

With vanished falseness, recognize no worth 

In fact new-born unless 't is rendered back 

Pallid by fancy, as the western rack 



/ 



GERARD DE LAIRESSE 131 

Of fading cloud bequeaths the lake some gleam 
Of its gone glory ! " 

XIV. 

Let things be — not seem, 
I counsel rather, — do, and nowise dream ! 
Earth's young significance is all to learn : 
The dead Greek lore lies buried in the urn 
Where who seeks fire finds ashes. Ghost, forsooth ! 
What was the best Greece babbled of as truth ? 
" A shade, a wretched nothing, — sad, thin, drear, 
Cold, dark, it holds on to the lost loves here. 
If hand have haply sprinkled o'er the dead 
Three charitable dust-heaps, made mouth red 
One moment by the sip of sacrifice : 
Just so much comfort thaws the stubborn ice 
Slow-thickening upward till it choke at length 
The last faint flutter craving — not for strength, 
Not beauty, not the riches and the rule 
O'er men that made life life indeed." Sad school 
Was Hades ! Gladly, — might the dead but slink 
To life back, — to the dregs once more would drink 
Each interloper, drain the humblest cup 
Fate mixes for humanity. 



132 PARLEYINGS WITH 

XV. 

Cheer up, — 
Be death with me, as with Achilles erst, 
Of Man's calamities the last and worst : 
Take it so ! By proved potency that still 
Makes perfect, be assured, come what come will, 
What once lives never dies — what here attains 
To a beginning, has no end, still gains 
And never loses aught : when, where, and how — 
Lies in Law's lap. What 's death then ? Even now 
With so much knowledge is it hard to bear 
Brief interposing ignorance ? Is care 
For a creation found at fault just there — 
There where the heart breaks bond and outruns time, 
To reach not follow what shall be ? 

XVI. 

Here 's rhyme 
Such as one makes now, — say, when Spring repeats 
That miracle the Greek Bard sadly greets : 
" Spring for the tree and herb — no Spring for us ! " 
Let Spring come : why, a man salutes her thus : 

Dance, yellows and whites and reds, — 
Lead your gay orgy, leaves, stalks, heads 
Astir with the wind in the tulip-beds ! 



GERARD DE LAIRESSE 133 

There 's sunshine ; scarcely a wmd at all 
Disturbs starved grass and daisies small 
On a certain mound by a churchyard wall. 

Daisies and grass be my heart's bedfellows 

On the mound wind spares and sunshine mellows : 

Dance you, reds and whites and yellows ! 



VII 
WITH CHARLES AVISON 



WITH CHARLES AVISON 



How strange ! — but, first of all, the little fact 

Which led my fancy forth. This bitter morn 

Showed me no object in the stretch forlorn 

Of garden-ground beneath my window, backed 

By yon worn wall wherefrom the creeper, tacked 

To clothe its brickwork, hangs now, rent and racked 

By five months' cruel winter, — showed no torn 

And tattered ravage worse for eyes to see 

Than just one ugly space of clearance, left 

Bare even of the bones which used to be 

Warm wrappage, safe embracement : this one cleft — 

— O what a life and beauty filled it up 

Staitlhigly, when metliought the rude clay cup 

Ran over with poured bright wine ! 'T was a bird 

Breast-deep there, tugging at his prize, deterred 

No whit by the fast-falling snow-flake : gain 

Such prize my blackcap must by might and main — 

The cloth-shred, still a-flutter from its nail 

That fixed a spray once. Now, what told the tale 



138 PARLE YINGS WITH 

To thee, — no townsman but born orchard-thief, — 
That here — surpassing moss-tuft, beard from sheaf 
Of sun-scorched barley, horsehairs long and stout. 
All proper country-pillage — here, no doubt, 
"Was just the scrap to steal should line thy nest 
Superbly ? Off he flew, his bill possessed 
The booty sure to set his wife's each wing 
Greenly a-quiver. How they climb and cling. 
Hang parrot-wise to bough, these blackcaps ! Strange 
Seemed to a city-dweller that the finch 
Should stray so far to forage : at a pinch. 
Was not the fine wool's self within his range 
— Filchings on every fence ? But no : the need 
Was of this rag of manufacture, spoiled 
By art, and yet by nature near unsoiled. 
New-suited to what scheming finch would breed 
In comfort, this uncomfortable March. 

II. 

Yet — by the first pink blossom on the larch ! — 
This was scarce stranger than that memory, — 
In want of what should cheer the stay-at-home, 
My soul, — must straight clap pinion, well-nigh roam 
A century back, nor once close plume, descry 
The appropriate rag to plunder, till she pounced — 
Pray, on what relic of a brain long still ? 
What old-world work proved forage for the bill 



CHARLES AVISON 139 

Of memory the far-flyer ? " March " announced, 
I verily believe, the dead and gone 
Name of a music-maker : one of such 
In England as did little or did much, 
But, doing, had their day once. Avison ! 
Singly and solely for an air of thine, 
Bold-stepping " March," foot stept to ere my hand 
Could stretch an octave, I o'erlooked the band 
Of majesties familiar, to decline 
On thee — not too conspicuous on the list 
Of worthies who by help of pipe or wire 
Expressed in sound rough rage or soft desire — 
Thou, whileom of Newcastle organist ! 

ni. 

So much could one — well, thinnish air effect ! 

Am I ungrateful ? for, your March, styled " Grand," 

Did veritably seem to grow, expand. 

And greaten up to title as, unchecked. 

Dream-marchers marched, kept marching, slow and sure. 

In time, to tune, unchangeably the same, 

From nowhere into nowhere, — out they came. 

Onward they passed, and in they went. No lure 

Of novel modulation pricked the flat 

Forthright persisting melody, — no hint 

That discord, sound asleep beneath the flint. 

Struck — might spring spark-like, claim due tit-for-tat, 



140 PARLEYING S WITH 

Quenched in a concord. No ! Yet, such the might 

Of quietude's immutability, 

That somehow coldness gathered warmth, well-nigh 

Quickened — which could not be ! — grew burning-bright 

With fife-shriek, cymbal-clash and trumpet-blare. 

To drum-accentuation : pacing turned 

Striding, and striding grew gigantic, spurned 

At last the narrow space 'twixt earth and air, 

So shook me back into my sober self. 

IV. 

And where woke I ? The March had set me down 

There whence I plucked the measure, as his brown 

Frayed flannel-bit my blackcap. Great John Relfe, 

Master of mine, learned, redoubtable. 

It little needed thy consummate skill 

To fitly figure such a bass I The key 

Was — should not memory play me false — well, C. 

Ay, with the Greater Third, in Triple Time, 

Three crotchets to a bar : no change, I grant. 

Except from Tonic down to Dominant. 

And yet — and yet — if I could put in rhyme 

The manner of that marching I — which had stopped 

— I wonder, where? — but that my weak self dropped 

From out the ranks, to rub eyes disentranced 

And feel that, after all the way advanced, 

Back must I foot it, I and my compeers, 



CHARLES AVISON 141 

Only to reach, across a hundred years, 

The band'sman Avison whose little book 

And large tune thus had led me the long way 

(As late a rag my blackcap) from to-day 

And to-day's music-manufacture, — Brahms, 

Wagner, Dvorak, Liszt, — to where — trumpets, shawms, 

Show yourselves joyful ! — Handel reigns — supreme ? 

By no means ! Buononcini's work is theme 

For fit laudation of the impartial few : 

(We stand in England, mind you !) Fashion too 

Favors Geminiani — of those choice 

Concertos : nor there wants a certain voice 

Raised in thy favor likewise, famed Pepusch 

Dear to our great-grandfathers ! In a bush 

Of Doctor's wig, they prized thee timing beats 

While Greenway trilled "Alexis." Such were feats 

Of music in thy day — dispute who list — 

Avison, of Newcastle organist ! 

V. 

And here 's your music all alive once more — 
As once it was alive, at least : just so 
The figured worthies of a waxwork-show 
Attest — such people, years and years ago, 
Looked thus when outside death had life below, 

— Could say " We are now " not " We were of yore," 

— " Feel how our pulses leap ! " and not " Explore — 



142 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Explain why quietude has settled o'er 

Surface once all-awork ! " Ay, such a " Suite " 

Roused heart to rapture, such a " Fugue " would catch 

Soul heavenwards up, when time was : w^hy attach 

Blame to exhausted faultlessness, no match 

For fresh achievement ? Feat once — ever feat ! 

How can completion grow still more complete ? 

Hear Avison ! He tenders evidence 

That music in his day as much absorbed 

Heart and soul then as Wagner's music now, 

Perfect from centre to circumference — 

Orbed to the full can be but fully orbed : 

And yet — and yet — whence comes it that " O Thou ' 

Sighed by the soul at eve to Hesj^erus — 

Will not again take wing and fly away 

(Since fatal Wagner fixed it fast for us) 

In some unmodulated minor ? Nay, 

Even by Handel's help ! 

VI. 

I state it thus : 
There is no truer truth obtainable 
By Man than comes of music. " Soul " — (accept 
A word which vaguely names what no adept 
In word-use fits and fixes so that still 
Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain 
Innominate as first, yet, free again, 



1 



CHARLES A VI SON 148 

Is no less recognized the absolute 

Fact underlying that same other fact 

Concerning which no cavil can dispute 

Our nomenclature when we call it " Mind " — 

Something not Matter) — " Soul," who seeks shall find 

Distinct beneath that something. You exact 

An illustrative image ? This may suit. 

vn. 

We see a work : the worker works behind, 

Invisible himself. Suppose his act 

Be to o'erarch a gulf : he digs, transports, 

Shapes and, through enginery — all sizes, sorts, 

Lays stone by stone until a floor compact 

Proves our bridged causeway. So works Mind — by stress 

Of faculty, with loose facts, more or less, 

Builds up our solid knowledge : all the same, 

Underneath rolls what Mind may hide not tame, 

An element which works beyond our guess, 

Soul, the unsounded sea — whose lift of surge, 

Spite of all superstructure, lets emerge. 

In flower and foam. Feeling from out the deeps 

Mind arrogates no mastery upon — 

Distinct indisputably. Has there gone 

To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from rough 

Mind's flooring, — operosity enough ? 

Still the successive labor of each inch. 



144 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Who lists may learn : from the last turn of winch 

That let the polished slab-stone find its place, 

To the first prod of pickaxe at the base 

Of the unquarried mountain, — what was all 

Mind's varied process except natural, 

Nay, easy even, to descry, describe. 

After our fashion ? " So worked Mind : its tribe 

Of senses ministrant above, below, 

Far, near, or now or haply long ago 

Brought to pass knowledge." But Soul's sea, — drawn whence, 

Fed how, forced whither, — by what evidence 

Of ebb and flow, that 's felt beneath the tread, 

Soul has its course 'neath Mind's work overhead, — 

Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul ? 

Yet wherefore heaving sway and restless roll 

This side and that, except to emulate 

Stability above ? To match and mate 

Feeling with knowledge, — make as manifest 

Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest, 

Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise and sink 

Ceaselessly, passion's transient flit and wink, 

A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread 

Whitening the wave, — to strike all this life dead, 

Run mercury into a mould like lead. 

And henceforth have the plain result to show — 

How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know — 

This were the prize and is the puzzle ! — which 



CHARLES AVI SON 145 

Music essays to solve : and here 's the hitch 
That balks her of full triumph else to boast. 

vin. 

All Arts endeavor this, and she the most 
Attains thereto, yet fails of touching : why ? 
Does Mind get Knowledge from Art's ministry ? 
What 's known once is known ever : Arts arrange, 
Dissociate, rC'distribute, interchange 
Part with part, lengthen, broaden, high or deep 
Construct their bravest, — still such pains produce 
Change, not creation : simply what lay loose 
At first lies firmly after, what design 
Was faintly traced in hesitating line 
Once on a time, grows firmly resolute 
Henceforth and evermore. Now, could we shoot 
Liquidity into a mould, — some way 
Arrest Soul's evanescent moods, and keep 
Unalterably still the forms that leap 
To life for once by help of Art ! — which yearns 
To save its capture : Poetry discerns. 
Painting is 'ware of passion's rise and fall. 
Bursting, subsidence, intermixture — all 
A-seethe within the gulf. Each Art a-strain 
Would stay the apparition, — nor in vain : 
The Poet's word-mesh. Painter's sure and swift 
Color-and-line-throw — proud the prize they lift ! 



146 PA RLE YIN GS WITH 

Thus felt Man and thus looked Man, — passions caught 

I' the midway swim of sea, — not much, if aught. 

Of nether-brooding loves, hates, hopes and fears, 

Enwombed past Art's disclosure. Fleet the years. 

And still the Poet's page holds Helena 

At gaze from topmost Troy — " But where are they, 

My brothers, in the armament I name 

Hero by hero ? Can it be that shame 

For their lost sister holds them from the war ? " 

— Knowing not they already slept afar 

Each of them in his own dear native land. 

Still on the Painter's fresco, from the hand 

Of God takes Eve the life-spark whereunto 

She trembles up fron> nothingness. Outdo 

Both of them, Music ! Dredging deeper yet, 

Drag into day, — by sound, thy master-net, — 

The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing 

Unbroken of a branch, palpitating 

With limbs' play and life's semblance ! There it lies, 

Marvel and mystery, of mysteries 

And marvels, most to love and laud thee for I 

Save it from chance and change we most abhor ! 

Give momentary feeling permanence, 

So that thy capture hold, a century hence. 

Truth's very heart of truth as, safe to-day. 

The Painter's Eve the Poet's Helena 

Still rapturously bend, afar still throw 



I 



CHARLES AVISON 147 

The wistful gaze ! Thanks, Homer, Angelo ! 

Could Music rescue thus from Soul's profound, 

Give feeling immortality by sound. 

Then, were she queenliest of Arts ! Alas — 

As well expect the rainbow not to pass ! 

" Praise ' Radaminta ' — love attains therein 

To perfect utterance ! Pity — what shall win 

Thy secret like ' Rinaldo ' ? " — so men said : 

Once all was perfume — now, the flower is dead — 

They spied tints, sparks have left the spar ! Love, hate, 

Joy, fear, survive, — alike importunate 

As ever to go walk the world again. 

Nor ghost-like pant for outlet all in vain 

Till Music loose them, fit each filmily 

With form enough to know and name it by 

For any recognizer sure of ken 

And sharp of ear, no grosser denizen 

Of earth than needs be. Nor to such appeal 

Is Music long obdurate : off they steal — 

How gently, dawn-doomed phantoms ! back come they 

Full-blooded with new crimson of broad day — 

Passion made palpable once more. Ye look 

Your last on Handel ? Gaze your first on Gluck ! 

Why wistful search, O waning ones, the chart 

Of stars for you while Haydn, while Mozart 

Occupies heaven ? These also, fanned to fire. 

Flamboyant wholly, — so perfections tire, — 



148 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Whiten to wanness, till ... let others note 
The ever-new invasion ! 

IX. 

I devote 
Rather my modicum of parts to use 
What power may yet avail to re-infuse 
(In fancy, please you !) sleep that looks like death 
With momentary liveliness, lend breath 
To make the torpor half inhale. O Relfe, 
An all-unworthy pupil, from the shelf 
Of thy laboratory, dares unstop 
Bottle, ope box, extract thence pinch and drop 
Of dusts and dews a many thou didst shrine 
Each in its right receptacle, assign 
To each its proper office, letter large 
Label and label, then with solemn charge, 
Reviewing learnedly the list complete 
Of chemical reactives, from thy feet 
Push down the same to me, attent below. 
Power in abundance : armed wherewith I go 
To play the enlivener. Bring good antique stuff ! 
Was it ahght once ? Still lives spark enough 
For breath to quicken, run the smouldering ash 
Red right-through. What, " stone-dead " were fools so rash 
As style my Avison, because he lacked 
Modern appliance, spread out phrase unracked 



I 



CHARLES AVI SON 149 

By modulations fit to make each hair 

Stiffen upon his wig ? See there — and there ! 

I sprinkle my reactives, pitch broadcast 

Discords and resolutions, turn aghast 

Melody's easy-going, jostle law 

With license, modulate (no Bach in awe) 

Change enharmonically (Hudl to thank) 

And lo, upstart the flamelets, — what was blank 

Turns scarlet, purple, crimson ! Straightway scanned 

By eyes that like new lustre — Love once more 

Yearns through the Largo, Hatred as before 

Rages in the Rubato : e'en thy March 

My Avison, which, sooth to say — (ne'er arch 

Eyebrows in anger !) — timed, in Georgian years 

The step precise of British Grenadiers 

To such a nicety, — if score I crowd, 

If rhythm I break, if beats I vary, — tap 

At bar's off-starting turns true thunder-clap, 

Ever the pace augmented till — what 's here ? 

Titanic striding toward Olympus ! 



Fear 
No such irreverent innovation ! Still 
Glide on, go rolling, water-like, at will — 
Nay, were thy melody in monotone, 
The due three-parts dispensed with ! 



150 PARLEYINGS WITH 

XI. 

This alone 
Comes of my tiresome talking : Music's throne 
Seats somebody whom somebody unseats, 
And whom in turn — by who knows what new feats 
Of strength — shall somebody as sure push down, 
Consign him dispossessed of sceptre, crown, 
And orb imperial — whereto ? Never dream 
That what once lived shall ever die ! They seem 
Dead — do they ? lajDsed things lost in limbo ? Bring 
Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king 
Starts, you shall see, stands up, from head to foot 
No inch that is not Purcell ! Wherefore ? (Suit 
Measure to subject, first — no marching on 
Yet in thy bold C major, Avison, 
As suited step a minute since : no : wait — 
Into the minor key first modulate — 
Gently with A, now — in the Lesser Third I) 

XII. 

Of all the lamentable debts incurred 

By Man through buying knowledge, this were worst : 

That he should find his last gain prove his first 

"Was futile — merely nescience absolute, 

Not knowledge in the bud which holds a fruit 

Haply undreamed of in the soul's Spring-tide, 



1 



CHARLES AVISON 151 

Pursed in the petals Summer opens wide, 

And Autumn, withering, rounds to perfect ripe, — 

Not this, — but ignorance, a blur to wipe 

From human records, late it graced so much. 

" Truth — this attainment ? Ah, but such and such 

Beliefs of yore seemed inexpugnable 

When we attained them ! E'en as they, so will 

This their successor have the due morn, noon, 

Evening and night — just as an old-world tune 

Wears out and drops away, until who hears 

Smilingly questions — ' This it was brought tears 

Once to all eyes, — this roused heart's rapture once ? ' 

So will it be with truth that, for the nonce, 

Styles itself truth perennial : 'ware its wile I 

Knowledge turns nescience, — foremost on the file, 

Simply proves first of our delusions." 

XIII. 

Now — 
Blare it forth, bold C major ! Lift thy brow, 
Man, the immortal, that wast never fooled 
With gifts no gifts at all, nor ridiculed — 
Man knowing — he who nothing knew ! As Hope, 
Fear, Joy, and Grief, — though ampler stretch and scope 
They seek and find in novel rhythm, fresh phrase, — 
Were equally existent in far days 
Of Music's dim beginning — even so, 



152 PARLEYINGS WITH 

Truth was at full within thee long ago, 

Alive as now it takes what latest shape 

May startle thee by strangeness. Truths escape 

Time's insufficient garniture : they fade, 

They fall — those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid 

Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine 

And free through March frost : May dews crystalline 

Nourish truth merely, — does June boast the fruit 

As — not new vesture merely but, to boot. 

Novel creation ? Soon shall fade and fall 

Myth after myth — the husk-like lies I call 

New truth's corolla-safeguard : Autumn comes, 

So much the better ! 

XIV. 

Therefore — bang the drums, 
Blow the trumps, Avison ! March-motive ? that 's 
Truth which endures resetting. Sharps and flats, 
Lavish at need, shall dance athwart thy score 
When ophicleide and bombardon's uproar 
Mate the approaching trample, even now 
Big in the distance — or my ears deceive — 
Of federated England, fitly weave 
March-music for the Future ! 



CHARLES AVISON 153 

XV. 

Or suppose 
Back, and not forward, transformation goes ? 
Once more some sable-stoled procession — say, 
From Little-ease to Tyburn wends its way, 
Out of the dungeon to the gallows-tree 
Where heading, hacking, hanging is to be 
Of half-a-dozen recusants — this day 
Three hundred years ago ! How duly drones 
Elizabethan plain-song — dim antique 
Grown clarion-clear the while I humbly wreak 
A classic vengeance on thy March ! It moans — 
Larges and Longs and Breves displacing quite 
Crotchet-and-quaver pertness — brusliing bars 
Aside and filling vacant sky with stars 
Hidden till now that day returns to night. 

XVI. 

Nor night nor day : one purpose move us both, 
Be thy mood mine ! As thou wast minded, Man 's 
The cause our music champions : I were loth 
To think we cheered our troop to Preston Pans 
Ignobly : back to times of England's best ! 
Parliament stands for privilege — life and limb 
Guards HoUis, Haselrig, Strode, Hampden, Pym, 
The famous Five. There 's rumor of arrest. 



154 PARLE YIN GS WITH 

Bring up the Train Bands, Southwark ! They protest : 
Shall we not all join chorus ? Hark the hymn, 

— Rough, rude, robustious — homely heart a-throb, 
Harsh voice a-hallo, as beseems the mob ! 

How good is noise ! what 's silence but despair 
Of making sound match gladness never there ? 
Give me some great glad " subject," glorious Bach, 
Where cannon-roar not organ-peal we lack ! 
Join in, give voice robustious rude and rough, — 
Avison helps — so heart lend noise enough ! 

Fife, trump, drum, sound ! and singers then 
Marching say " Pym, the man of men I " 
Up, heads, your proudest — out, throats, your loudest ~ 
*' Somerset's Pym ! " 

StrafPord from the block, Eliot from the den, 

Foes, friends, shout " Pym, our citizen ! " 

Wail, the foes he quelled, — hail, the friends he held, 

"Tavistock's Pym!" 

Hearts prompt heads, hands that ply the pen 
Teach babes unborn the where and when 

— Tyrants, he braved them, — patriots, he saved them 
" Westminster's Pym ! " 



CHARLES AVI SON 



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FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

AN EPILOGUE 



FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

(Inside the House of Fust, Mayence, 1457.) 
FIRST FRIEND. 

Up, up, up — next step of the staircase 
Lands us, lo, at the chamber of dread ! 

; SECOND FRIEND. 

Locked and barred ? 

THIRD FRIEND. 

Door open — the rare case ! 

FOURTH FRIEND. 

Ay, there he leans — lost wretch ! 

FIFTH FRIEND, 

His head 
Sunk on his desk 'twixt his arms outspread ! 

SIXTH FRIEND. 

Hallo, — wake, man, ere God thunderstrike Mayence 
— Mulct for thy sake who art Satan's, John Fust ! 



160 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

Satan installed here, God's rule in abeyance, 

Mayence some morning may crumble to dust. 
Answer our questions thou shalt and thou must ! 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

Softly and fairly ! Wherefore a-gloom ? 

Greet us, thy gossipry, cousin and sib ! 
Raise the forlorn brow, Fust ! Make room — 

Let daylight through arms which, enfolding thee, crib 
From those clenched lids the comfort of sunshine ! 

FIRST FRIEND. 

So glib 

Thy tongue slides to " comfort " already ? Not mine ! 

Behoves us deal roundly : the wretch is distraught 
— Too well I guess wherefore I Behoves a Divine 

— Such as I, by grace, boast me — to threaten one caught 
In the enemy's toils, — setting " comfort " at nought. 

SECOND FRIEND. 

Nay, Brother, so hasty ? I heard — nor long since — 
Of a certain Black Art'sman who, — helplessly bound 

By rash pact with Satan, — through paying — why mince 
The matter ? — fit price to the Church, — safe and sound 

Full a year after death in his grave-clothes was found. 

Whereas 't is notorious the Fiend claims his due 

During lifetime, — comes clawing, with talons aflame, 



AN EPILOGUE 161 

The soul from the flesh-rags left smoking and blue : 

So it happed with John Faust ; lest John Fust fare the 
same, — 
Look up, I adjure thee by God's holy name ! 

For neighbors and friends — no foul hell-brood flock we ! 

Saith Solomon " Words of the wise are as goads : " 
Ours prick but to startle from torpor, set free 

Soul and sense from death's drowse ! 

FIRST FRIEND. 

And soul, wakened, unloads 
Much sin by confession : no mere palinodes ! 

— "I was youthful and wanton, am old yet no sage : 
When angry I cursed, struck and slew : did I want ? 

Right and left did I rob : though no war I dared wage 

With the Church (God forbid !) — harm her least minis- 
trant — 
Still I outraged all else. Now that strength is grown scant, 

I am probity's self " — no such bleatings as these ! 

But avowal of guilt so enormous, it balks 
Tongue's telling. Yet penitence prompt may appease 

God's wrath at thy bond with the Devil who stalks 

— Strides hither to strangle thee ! 



162 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

FUST. 

Childhood so talks. — 

Not rare wit nor ripe age — ye boast them, my neighbors ! — 
Should lay such a charge on your townsman, this Fust 

Who, known for a life spent in pleasures and labors 
If freakish yet venial, could scarce be induced 

To traffic with fiends. 

FIRST FRIEND. 

So, my words have unloosed 
A plie from those pale lips corrugate but now ? 

FUST. 

Lost count me, yet not as ye lean to surmise. 

FIRST FRIEND. 

To surmise ? to establish ! Unbury that brow ! 

Look up, that thy judge may read clear in thine eyes ! 

SECOND FRIEND. 

By your leave, Brother Barnabite ! Mine to advise ! 

— Who arraign thee, John Fust ! What was bruited erewhile 
Now bellows through Mayence. All cry — thou hast trucked 

Salvation away for lust's solace ! Thy smile 
Takes its hue from hell's smoulder ! 



AN EPILOGUE 163 

FUST. 

Too certain ! I sucked 
— Got drunk at the nipple of sense. 

SECOND FKIEND. 

Thou hast ducked — 

Art drowned there, say rather ! Faugh — fleshly disport ! 

How else but by help of Sir Belial didst win 
That Venus-like lady, no drudge of thy sort 

Could lure to become his accomplice in sin ? 
Folks nicknamed her Helen of Troy ! 

FIRST FRIEND. 

Best begin 

At the very beginning. Thy father, — all knew, 
A mere goldsmith . . . 

FUST. 

Who knew him, perchance may know this — 
He dying left much gold and jewels no few : 

Whom these help to court with, but seldom shall miss 
The love of a leman : true witchcraft, I wis ! 

FIRST FRIEND. 

Dost flout me ? 'T is said, in debauchery's guild 
Admitted prime guttler and guzzler — O swine ! — 



164 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

To honor thy headship, those tosspots so swilled 
That out of their table there sprouted a vine 
Whence each claimed a cluster, awaiting thy sign 

To out knife, off mouthful : when — who could suppose 
Such malice in magic ? — each sot woke and found 

Cold steel but an inch from the neighbor's red nose 
He took for a grape-bunch ! 

FUST. 

Does that so astound 
Sagacity such as ye boast, — who surround 

Your mate with eyes staring, hairs standing erect 
At his magical feats ? Are good burghers unversed 

In the humors of toping ? Full oft, I suspect. 

Ye, counting your fingers, call thumbkin their first, 

And reckon a groat every guilder disbursed. 

What marvel if wags, while the skinker fast brimmed 
Their glass with rare tipple's enticement, should gloat 

— Befooled and beflustered — through optics drink-dimmed 
On this draught and that, till each found in his throat 

Our Rhenish smack rightly as Raphal ? For, note — 

They fancied — their fuddling deceived them so grossly — 
That liquor sprang out of the table itself 



AN EPILOGUE 165 

'hrough gimlet-holes drilled there, — nor noticed how closely 

The skinker kept plying my guests, from the shelf 
)'er their heads, with the potable madness. No elf 

lad need to persuade them a vine rose umbrageous, 
Fruit-bearing, thirst-quenching ! Enough ! I confess 

To many such fool-pranks, but none so outrageous ^ 
That Satan was called in to help me : excess 

I own to, I grieve at — no more and no less. 

SECOND FRIEND. 

Strange honors were heaped on thee — medal for breast. 
Chain for neck, sword for thigh : not a lord of the land 

But acknowledged thee peer ! What ambition possessed 
A goldsmith by trade, with craft's grime on his hand. 

To seek such associates ? 

FUST. 

Spare taunts ! Understand — 

I submit me ! Of vanities under the sun, 
Pride seized me at last as concupiscence first, 

Crapulosity ever : true Fiends, everyone. 

Haled this way and that my poor soul : thus amerced — 

Forgive and forget me ! 

FIRST FRIEND. 

Had flesh sinned the worst, 



166 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

Yet help were in counsel : the Church could absolve : 

But say not men truly thou barredst escape 
By signing and sealing ... 

SECOND FRIEND. 

On me must devolve 
The task of extracting . . . 

FIRST FRIEND. 

Shall Barnabites ape 
Us Dominican experts ? 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

Nay, Masters, — agape 

When Hell yawns for a soul, 't is myself claim the task 
Of extracting, by just one plain question, God's truth ! 

Where 's Peter Genesheim thy partner ? I ask 
Why, cloistered up still in thy room, the pale youth 

Slaves tongue-tied — thy trade brooks no tattling forsooth ! 

No less he, thj famulus, suffers entrapping. 
Succumbs to good fellowship : barrel a-broach 

Runs freely nor needs any subsequent tapping : 

Quoth Peter " That room, none but I dare approach, 

Holds secrets will help me to ride in my coach." 



AN EPILOGUE 167 

le prattles, we profit : in brief, he assures 

Thou hast taught him to speak so that all men may hear 
_ Each alike, wide world over, Jews, Pagans, Turks, Moors, 

The same as we Christians — speech heard far and near 
SA, one and the same magic moment ! 



FUST. 

That 's clear 



5aid he — how ? 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

Is it like he was licensed to learn ? 

Who doubts but thou dost this by aid of the Fiend? 
[s it so ? So it is, for thou smilest ! Go, burn 

To ashes, since such proves thy portion, unscreened 
By bell, book and candle I Yet lately I weened 

Balm yet was in Gilead, — some healing in store 

For the friend of my bosom. Men said thou wast sunk 

In a sudden despondency : not, as before, 

Fust gallant and gay with his pottle and punk, 

But sober, sad, sick as one yesterday drunk ! 

FUST. 

Spare Fust, then, thus contrite ! — who, youthful and healthy. 
Equipped for life's struggle with culture of mind, 

Sound flesh and sane soul in coherence, born wealthy. 
Nay, wise — how he wasted endowment designed 

For the glory of God and the good of mankind ! 



168 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

That much were misused such occasions of grace 
Ye well may upbraid him, who bows to the rod. 

But this should bid anger to pity give place — 

He has turned from the wrong, in the right path to plod, 

Makes amends to mankind and craves pardon of God. 

Yea, friends, even now from my lips the " Heureka — 
Soul saved ! " was nigh bursting — unduly elate ! 

Have I brought Man advantage, or hatched — so to speak — 
Strange serpent, no cygnet ? 'T is this I debate 

Within me. Forbear, and leave Fust to his fate ! 

FIRST FRIEND. 

So abject, late lofty ? Methinks I spy respite. 

Make clean breast, discover what mysteries hide 
In thy room there ! 

SECOND FRIEND. 

Ay, out with them ! Do Satan despite ! 
Remember what caused his undoing was pride ! 

FIRST FRIEND. 

Dumb devil ! Remains one resource to be tried ! 

SECOND FRIEND. 

Exorcise ! 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

Nay, first — is there any remembers 



AN EPILOGUE 169 

In substance that potent " Ne pulvis " — a psalm 
Whereof some live spark haply lurks mid the embers 

Which choke in my brain. Talk of " Gilead and balm " ? 
I mind me, sung half through, this gave such a qualm 

To Asmodeus inside of a Hussite, that, queasy. 

He broke f jrth in brimstone with curses. I 'm strong 

In — at least the commencement : the rest should go easy, 
Friends helping. " Ne pulvis et ignis "... 



SIXTH FRIEND. 
FIFTH FRIEND. 

I Ve conned till I captured the whole. 



All wrong ! 



SEVENTH FRIEND. 

Get along ! 

" Ne pulvis et cinis superbe te geras, 
Namfulmina'' . . . 

SIXTH FRIEND. 

Fiddlestick ! Peace, dolts and dorrs ! 
Thus runs it " Ne Numinis fuhnina feras " — 

Then '^ Hominis perfidi justa su7it sors 
Fulmen et grando et horrida morsy 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

You blunder. " Irati ?ie." . . . 



170 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

SIXTH FRIEND. 

Mind your own business ! 

FIFTH FRIEND. 

I do not so badly, who gained the monk's leave 
To study an hour his choice parchment. A dizziness 

May well have surprised me. No Christian dares thieve, 
Or I scarce had returned him his treasure. These cleave : 

" Nbs pidvis et cinis, trementes, gementes, 

Venimus " — some such word — " ad te, Domine I 

Da lumen, juvamen, ut sancta sequentes 
Cor . . . co7\la "... Plague take it ! 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

— " erecta sint spe : '' 
Right text, ringing rhyme, and ripe Latin for me ! 

SIXTH FRIEND. 

A Canon's self wrote it me fair : I was tempted 
To part with the sheepskin. 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

Didst grasp and let go 
Such a godsend, thou Judas? My purse had been emptied 
Ere part with the prize ! 



AN EPILOGUE 171 



FUST. 



Do I dream ? Say ye so ? 
Clouds break, then ! Move, world ! I have gained my " Pott 



I am saved : Archimedes, salute me ! 

OMNES. 

Assistance ! 
Help, Angels ! He summons . . . Aroint thee ! — by name, 
His familiar ! 

FUST. 

Approach ! 

OMNES. 

Devil, keep thy due distance ! 

FUST. 

Be tranquillized, townsmen ! The knowledge ye claim 
Behold, I prepare to impart. Praise or blame, — 

Your blessing or banning, whatever betide me. 

At last I accept. The slow travail of years, 
The long-teeming brain's birth — applaud me, deride me, — 

At last claims revealment. Wait ! 



172 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

Wait till appears 
Uncaged Archimedes cooped-up there ? 

SECOND FRIEND. 

Who fears ? 
Here 's have at thee ! 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

Correctly now ! " Pulvis et cinis '* . . 

FUST. 

The verse ye so value, it happens I hold 
In my memory safe from initium to finis. 

Word for word, I produce you the whole, plain enrolled, 
Black letters, white paper — no scribe's red and gold ! 

OMNES. 

Aroint thee ! 

FUST. 

I go and return. {He enters the inner room,) 

FIRST FRIEND. 

Ay, 'tis "^5^s" 
No doubt : but as boldly " redihis " — who '11 say ? 
I rather conjecture " in Oreo peinbis ! " 



AN EPILOGUE 173 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

Come, neighbors ! 

SIXTH FRIEND. 

I 'm with you ! Show courage and stay 
Hell's outbreak ? Sirs, cowardice here wins the day ! 

FIFTH FRIEND. 

What luck had that student of Bamberg who ventured 

To peep in the cell where a wizard of note 
Was busy in getting some black deed debentured 

By Satan ? In dog's guise there sprang at his throat 
A flame-breathing fury. Fust favors, I note, 



An ugly huge lurcher ! 



SEVENTH FRIEND. 



If I placed reliance 
As thou, on the beads thou art telling so fast, 
I 'd risk just a peep through the keyhole. 

SIXTH FRIEND. 

Appliance 
Of ear might be safer. Five minutes are past. 

OMNES. 

Saints, save us ! The door is thrown open at last ! 



174 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

FUST (re-enters, the door closing behind him). 

As I promised, behold I perform ! Apprehend you 

The object I offer is poison or pest ? 
Receive without harm from the hand I extend you 

A gift that shall set every scruple at rest I 
Shrink back from mere paper-strips ? Try them and test ! 

Still hesitate ? Myk, was it thou who lamentedst 
Thy five wits clean failed thee to render aright 

A poem read once and no more ? — who repentedst 
Vile pelf had induced thee to banish from sight 

The characters none but our clerics indite ? 

Take and keep ! 

FIRST FRIEND. 

Blessed Mary and all Saints about her ! 

SECOND FRIEND. 

What imps deal so deftly, — five minutes suffice 
To play thus the penman ? 

THIRD FRIEND. 

By Thomas the Doubter, 
Five minutes, no more ! 

FOURTH FRIEND. 

Out on arts that entice 
Such scribes to do homaore ! 



AN EPILOGUE 175 

FIFTH FRIEND. 

Stay ! Once — and now twice — 

Yea, a third time, my sharp eye completes the inspection 

Of line after line, the whole series, and finds 
Each letter join each — not a fault for detection ! 

Such upstrokes, such downstrokes, such strokes of all kinds 
In the criss-cross, all perfect ! 

SIXTH FRIEND. 

There 's nobody minds 

His quill-craft with more of a conscience, o'erscratches 
A sheepskin more nimbly and surely with ink. 

Than Paul the Sub-Prior : here 's paper that matches 
His parchment with letter on letter, no link 

Overleapt — underlost ! 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

No erasure, I think — 
No blot, I am certain ! 

FUST. 



Accept the new treasure 



176 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

SIXTH FRIEND. 

I remembered full half ! 

SEVENTH FRIEND. 

But who other than I 
(Bear witness, bystanders !) when he broke the measure 
Repaired fault with ^^fulmen " ? 

FUST. 

Put bickerings by ! 
Here 's for thee — thee — and thee, too : at need a supply 

{distributing Proofs) 

For Mayence, though seventy times seven should muster ! 

How now ? All so feeble of faith that no face 
Which fronts me but whitens — or yellows, were juster ? 

Speak out lest I summon my Spirits ! 

OMNES. 

Grace — grace ! 
Call none of thy — helpmates ! We 11 answer apace ! 

My jDaper — and mine — and mine also — they vary 

In nowise — agree in each tittle and jot ! 
Fust, how — why was this ? 



AN EPILOGUE 177 

FUST. 

Shall such " Cur " miss a " quare " ? 
Within, there ! Throw doors wide ! Behold who complot 
To abolish the scribe's work — blur, blunder and blot ! 

{The doors open, and the Press is discovered in operation.) 

Brave full-bodied birth of this brain that conceived thee 
In splendor and music, — sustained the slow drag 

Of the days stretched to years dim with doubt, — yet believed 
thee. 
Had faith in thy first leap of life I Pulse might flag — 

— Mine fluttered how faintly ! — Arch-moment might lag 

Its longest — I bided, made light of endurance, 

Held hard by the hope of an advent which — dreamed, 

Is done now : night yields to the dawn's reassurance : 
I have thee — I hold thee — my fancy that seemed, 

My fact that proves palpable ! Ay, Sirs, I schemed 

Completion that 's fact : see this Engine — be witness 
Yourselves of its working ! Nay, handle my Types ! 

Each block bears a Letter : in order and fitness 

I range them. Turn, Peter, the winch I See, it gripes 

What 's under ! Let loose — draw ! In regular stripes 



178 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

Lies plain, at one pressure, your poem — touched, tinted, 
Turned out to perfection ! The sheet, late a blank. 

Filled — ready for reading, — not written but Printed ! 
Omniscient omnipotent God, Thee I thank. 

Thee ever. Thee only ! — Thy creature that shrank 

From no task Thou, Creator, imposedst ! Creation 

Revealed me no object, from insect to Man, 
But bore Thy hand's impress : earth glowed with salvation : 

" Hast sinned ? Be thou saved. Fust ! Continue my plan, 
Who spake and earth was : with my word things began. 

" As sound so went forth, to the sight be extended 
Word's mission henceforward I The task I assign, 

Embrace — thy allegiance to evil is ended ! 

Have cheer, soul impregnate with purpose ! Combine 

Soul and body, give birth to my concept — called thine ! 

" Far and wide. North and South, East and West, have 
dominion 

O'er thought, winged wonder, Word ! Traverse world 
In sun-flash and sphere-song ! Each beat of thy pinion 

Bursts night, beckons day : once Truth's banner unfurled. 
Where 's Falsehood ? Sun-smitten, to nothingness hurled ! " 

More humbly — so, friends, did my fault find redemption. 
I sinned, soul-entoiled by the tether of sense : 



AN EPILOGUE 179 

My captor reigned master : I plead no exemption 

From Satan's award to his servant : defence 
From the fiery and final assault would be — whence ? 

By making — as man might — to truth restitution ! 

Truth is God : tramj)le lies and lies' father, God's foe ! 
Fix fact fast : truths change by an hour's revolution : 

What deed's very doer, unaided, can show 
How 't was done a year — month — week — day — minute ago ? 

At best, he relates it — another reports it — 

A third — nay, a thousandth records it : and still 

Narration, tradition, no step but distorts it, 

As down from truth's height it goes sliding until 

At the low level lie-mark it stops — whence no skill 

Of the scribe, intervening too tardily, rescues 

— Once fallen — lost fact from lie's fate there. What scribe 
— Eyes horny with poring, hands crippled with desk-use, 

Brains fretted by fancies — the volatile tribe 
That tease weary watchers — can boast that no bribe 

Shuts eye and frees hand and remits brain from toiling ? 

Truth gained — can we stay, at whatever the stage. 
Truth a-slide, — save her snow from its ultimate soiling 

In mire, — by some process, stamp promptly on page 
Fact spoiled by pen's plodding, make truth heritage 



180 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

Not merely of clerics but poured out, full measure, 
On clowns — every mortal endowed with a mind ? 

Read, gentle and simple ! Let labor win leisure 
At last to bid truth do all duty assigned. 

Not pause at the noble but pass to the hind ! 

How bring to effect such swift sure simultaneous 

Unlimited multijilication ? How spread 
By an arm-sweep a hand-throw — no helping extraneous — 

Truth broadcast o'er Europe ? " The goldsmith " I said 
" Graves limning on gold : why not letters on lead ? " 

So, Tuscan artificer, grudge not thy jDardon 

To me who played false, made a furtive descent, 

Found the sly secret work-shop, — thy genius kept guard on 
Too slackly for once, — and surprised thee low-bent 

O'er thy labor — some chalice thy tool would indent 

With a certain free scroll-work framed round by a border 
Of foliage and fruitage : no scratching so fine. 

No shading so shy but, in ordered disorder, 

Each flourish came clear, — unbewildered by shine, 

On the gold, irretrievably right, lay each line. 

How judge if thy hand worked thy will ? By reviewing. 

Revising again and again, piece by piece. 
Tool's performance, — this way, as I watched. 'T was throi 
glueing 



AN EPILOGUE 181 

A paper-like film-stuff — thin, smooth, void of crease, 
On each cut of the graver : press hard ! at release, 

No mark on the plate but the paper showed double ; 

His work might proceed : as he judged — space or speck 
Up he filled, forth he flung — was relieved thus from trouble 

Lest wrong — once — were right never more : what could 
check 
Advancement, completion ? Thus lay at my beck — 

At my call — triumph likewise ! " For " cried I " what hinders 
That graving turns Printing ? Stamp one word — not one 

But fifty such, phoenix -like, spring from death's cinders, — 
Since death is word's doom, clerics hide from the sun 

As some churl closets up this rare chalice." Go, run 

Thy race now. Fust's child ! High, Printing, and holy 
Thy mission ! These types, see, I chop and I change 

Till the words, every letter, a pageful, not slowly 
Yet surely lies fixed : last of all, I arrange 

A paper beneath, stamp it, loosen it ! 

FIRST FRIEND. 

Strange ! 

SECOND FRIEND. 

How simple exceedingly ! 



182 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

FUST. 

Bustle, my Schoefer ! 
Set type,— quick, Genesheim ! Turn screw now ! 

THIRD FRIEND. 

Just that ! 

FOURTH FRIEND. 

And no such vast miracle ! 

FUST. 

*' Plough Avith my heifer, 
Ye find out my riddle," quoth Samson, and pat 
He speaks to the purpose. Grapes squeezed in the vat 

Yield to sight and to taste what is simple — a liquid 
Mere urchins may sip : but give time, let ferment — 

You 've wine, manhood's master I Well, " redius si quid 
Novistis impertlte ! " Wait the event. 

Then weigh the result ! But, whatever Thy intent, 

O Thou, the one force in the whole variation 
Of visible nature, — at work — do I doubt ? — 

From Thy first to our last, in perpetual creation — 
A film hides us from Thee — 'twixt inside and out, 

A film, on this earth where Thou bringest about 

New marvels, new forms of the glorious, the gi'ucious. 
We bow to, we bless for : no star bursts heaven's dome 



AN EPILOGUE 183 

But Thy finger impels it, no weed peeps audacious 

Earth's clay-floor from out, but Thy finger makes room 
For one world's-want the more in Thy Cosmos : presume 

Shall Man, Microcosmos, to claim the conception 
Of grandeur, of beauty, in thought, word or deed ? 

I toiled, but Thy light on my diibiousest step shone : 
If I reach the glad goal, is it I who succeed 

Who stumbled at starting tripped up by a reed, 

Or Thou ? Knowledge only and absolute, glory 

As utter be Thine who concedest a spark 
Of Thy spheric perfection to earth's transitory 

Existences I Nothing that lives, but Thy mark 
Gives law to — life's light : what is doomed to the dark ? 

Where 's ignorance ? Answer, creation ! What height, 
What depth has escaped Thy commandment — to KJiow ? 

What birth in the ore-bed but answers aright 

Thy sting at its heart which impels — bids " E*en so, 

Not otherwise move or be motionless, — grow, 

*' Decline, disappear ! " Is the plant in default 

How to bud, when to branch forth ? The bird and the beast 
— Do they doubt if their safety be found in assault 

Or escape ? Worm or fly, of what atoms the least 
But follows light's guidance, — will famish, not feast ? 



184 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

In such various degree, fly and worm, ore and plant, 
All know, none is ignorant : round each, a wall 

Encloses the portion, or ample or scant. 

Of Knowledge : beyond which one hair's breadth, for all 

Lies blank — not so much as a blackness — a pall 

Some sense unimagined must penetrate : plain 

Is only old license to stand, walk or sit, 
Move so far and so wide in the narrow domain 

Allotted each nature for life's use : past it 
How immensity spreads does he guess ? Not a whit. 

Does he care ? Just as little. Without ? No, within 

Concerns him : he Knows. Man Ignores — thanks to Thee 

Who madest him know, but — in knowing — begin 
To know still new vastness of knowledge must be 

Outside him — to enter, to traverse, in fee 

Have and hold ! " Oh, Man's ignorance ! " hear the fool whine ! 

How were it, for better or worse, didst thou grunt 
Contented with sapience — the lot of the swine 

Who knows he was born for just truffles to hunt ? — 
Monks' Paradise — " Semjjer sint res uti sunt ! " 

No, Man 's the prerogative — knowledge once gained — 

To ignore, — find new knowledge to press for, to swerve 
In pursuit of, no, not for a moment : attained — 



AN EPILOGUE 186 

Why, onward through ignorance ! Dare and deserve ! 
As still to its asymptote speedeth the curve, 

So approximates Man — Thee, who, reachable not, 
Hast formed him to yearningly follow Thy whole 

Sole and single omniscience ! 

Such, friends, is my lot : 
I am back with the world : one more step to the goal 

Thanks for reaching I render — Fust's help to Man's soul ! 

Mere mechanical help ? So the hand gives a toss 
To the falcon, — aloft once, spread pinions and fly, 

Beat air far and wide, up and down and across ! 
My Press strains a-tremble : whose masterful eye 

Will be first, in new regions, new truth to descry ? 

Give chase, soul I Be sure each new capture consigned 
To my Types will go forth to the world, like God's bread 

— Miraculous food not for body but mind. 

Truth's manna ! How say you ? Put case that, instead 

Of old leasing and lies, we superiorly fed 



These Heretics, Hussites 



FIRST FRIEND. 

First answer my query ! 



If saved, art thou happy ? 



186 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS 

FUST. 

I was and I am. 

FIKST FRIEND. 

Thy visage confirms it : how comes, then, that — weary 
And woe-begone late — was it show, was it sham? — 
We fomid thee smik thiswise ? 

SECOND FRIEND. 

— In need of the dram 
From the flask which a provident neighbor might carry ! 

FUST. 

Ah, friends, the fresh triumph soon flickers, fast fades I 
I hailed Word's dispersion : could heartleaps but tarry ! 

Through me does Print furnish Truth wings ? The same aids 
Cause Falsehood to range just as widely. What raids 

On a region undreamed of does Printing enable 
Truth's foe to effect ! Printed leasing and lies 

May speed to the world's farthest corner — gross fable 
No less than pure fact — to impede, neutralize, 

Abolish God's gift and Man's gain ! 

FIRST FRIEND. 

Dost surmise 



AN EPILOGUE 187 

What struck me at first blush ? Our Beghards, Waldenses, 
Jeronimites, Hussites — does one show his head, 

Spout heresy now ? Not a priest in his senses 

Deigns answer mere speech, but piles fagots instead, 

Refines as by fire, and, him silenced, all 's said. 

Whereas if in future I pen an opuscule 

Defying retort, as of old when rash tongues 
Were easy to tame, — straight some knave of the Huss-School 

Prints answer forsooth ! Stop invisible lungs ? 
The barrel of blasphemy broached once, who bungs ? 

SECOND FRIEND. 

Does my sermon, next Easter, meet fitting acceptance ? 

Each captious disputative boy has his quirk 
" An cinque credendiwi sit ? " Well, the Church kept " arts " 

In order till Fust set his engine at work ! 
What trash will come flying from Jew, Moor, and Turk 

When, goosequill, thy reign o'er the world is abolished ! 

Goose — ominous name ! With a goose woe began : 
Quoth Huss — which means " goose " in his idiom unpolished — 

" Ye burn now a Goose : there succeeds me a Swan 
Ye shall find quench your fire ! " 

FUST. 

I foresee such a man. 



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740 










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